


Beneath the Sandglass

by ArtemisRayne



Series: The Hands of Time [1]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: AU after 1x10, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-26
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 04:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 45,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRayne/pseuds/ArtemisRayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What looked like a simple suicide takes a turn for the worst when a disturbing pattern crops up across Haven, pitting Audrey and Nathan against the Troubles once more. When it infects one of their own, can they solve the case before their time runs out?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Normal Day in Haven

**Author's Note:**

> AU after episode 1x10 - "The Hand You're Dealt."

As Nathan Wuornos shifted his truck into park outside the yellow tape of the crime scene, he was wondering if this was what life might have been like if he'd grown up to become a cop in some town that  _wasn't_  Haven, Maine. He had barely even crawled out of bed that morning before the text alert on his mobile lit up on his bedside table and informed him of the car versus pedestrian accident on Oak Street. Normally the prospect of such a regular incident would have been like adrenaline to Nathan, but that morning he was mostly just exhausted and wanted to drag himself back beneath the covers. So he'd dressed slowly, lingered in his kitchen long enough to get a cup of coffee, and then finally jumped into the old Ford and headed to the scene.

He was pretty sure that he felt just like every other person in the world on a Monday morning; tired, irritable, and very reluctant to go to work.

A few curious people were hovering around the tape, peering in at the scene while the other weary-looking officers tried to keep them back. The ambulance was parked on the opposite side of the scene, and in the middle was a car with a bloodstained, cracked windshield. His eyes lingered for a moment on the human-shaped chalk outline etched onto the asphalt.

"You look terrible." Nathan glanced up to see that his partner, Audrey Parker, had walked around the edge of the scene to meet him. She looked a lot more conscious than he felt.

"Good morning to you, too," he replied dryly. "So what've we got?"

"Jenna Brooks, over there," Audrey pointed to the open back of the ambulance, where a young woman was being looked over by an EMT, "was driving to work. Says the guy just bolted out in front of her car, and she didn't have time to stop."

"The guy?" he asked.

"Is already bagged up and headed for the morgue," she said. "Didn't have any ID on him. They said they'll get back to us when they ID him and finish the autopsy."

"Why are they even doing an autopsy?" Nathan asked, arching an eyebrow. "He jumped in front of a car. Or are you creating a supernatural suspect list again?"

Audrey gave him a pointed glare. "Someone's testy this morning," she remarked. He ignored the jibe, waiting for her to finish. "They're running tox screens to check for alcohol or drugs. It wouldn't hurt to figure out why exactly he decided to become a hood ornament."

"Sure," Nathan said with a shrug. "As long as vampires aren't involved." He caught Audrey rolling her eyes and tried not to smile. "So did you get everything done before I got here?"

"I probably could've with how long it took you," she said, shooting him a questioning glance. He didn't respond. "But no, I haven't talked to Ms Brooks yet. I saved it for last; I know just how much you love it."

He smiled sarcastically and followed her as she set off across the scene to the ambulance. The woman sitting there looked to be in her early twenties, and she probably would've been pretty if she wasn't so terrified. She was pale and sweaty and had obviously been crying. When she saw them coming, she flinched, and her eyes began watering again.

"I didn't mean to, I swear it," she stammered out in a shaky voice. "I didn't see him!"

"It's okay, Ms Brooks, we know," Audrey said calmly. As usual, Nathan stayed a few steps behind her, watching the interaction for any signs that his partner might miss while she was interrogating. "We just need you to tell us what happened. As detailed as you can."

The woman nodded and swallowed hard. "I was on my way to work, and I'd just come around the corner from Park Street," she said slowly. "It was still kind of dark, I couldn't see much. And then he was just  _there_ , in front of my car. I – I don't even know if he saw me before it – before I – it was so terrible." She stopped, shivering madly and seeming to retreat in on herself.

"You say you don't think he saw you?" Audrey pressed gently.

"No, he was looking out that way," Ms Brooks said, pointing at an angle across the road, away from her car and in the direction of a stretch of ocean visible over the rail fence. "I hit the horn, but he didn't even turn around. Just staggered there and then –" She trailed off again, but Audrey just nodded in understanding.

"Okay, thank you, Ms Brooks," she said. "If we have any more questions, we'll call." When the shaken woman nodded, Audrey turned around and gestured for Nathan to join her as she headed around toward his truck again. "So, what do you think?" she asked once they were out of earshot of the ambulance.

"She's definitely rattled," Nathan said with a small shrug. "I don't think she meant to hit anyone, if that's what you mean. Sounds like she was just the unfortunate weapon in some guy's suicide."

For once, Audrey didn't argue with him on it. "Imagine that, a normal case in Haven," she said.

"We do get those occasionally," he supplied and plunged his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Less often since you've shown up, but it's been known to happen." They stopped in front of his trusty Ford, and he leant against the grill lazily.

"How nice. So we can go back to the office and write up our prelim reports while we wait to find out whatever drug of choice John Doe used to give himself the guts to play chicken with a car," Audrey said. Nathan couldn't help but smile slightly at the matter-of-fact tone she used to talk about these sort of things. "Cheery morning."

"On the way to the station, we should stop for pancakes," Nathan put in abruptly. She looked up at him in that same awed and amused expression that usually preceded a comment about how strange he was. "I'm hungry," he said simply and shrugged again.

Audrey shook her head and laughed. "A bit early in the day for you to be taking pancake breaks, don't you think?" she asked. "How about just stopping for coffee so we can get this paperwork done today?" Nathan grudgingly agreed as they climbed into their cars and started off towards the station.

The rest of the day was delightfully uneventful. Nathan and Audrey spent the majority of it locked away in their office as they carved their way through the mountains of paperwork that had grown on their desks over the last few weeks. Even after his third cup of coffee, Nathan was having a hard time focusing on what he was doing, which resulted in a lot of annoyed grumbling as he scratched out mistakes on his files.

It wasn't until four o'clock that evening that Audrey finally confronted him about it. They had only just gotten back from responding to a possible burglary - which had turned out to be a false alarm triggered by a cat - and Nathan had crumbled up the incident form he'd been working on with a groan and tossed it into the nearest dustbin. He sighed under his breath and rested his forehead on his hand, propping his elbow against the desktop.

"Okay, Nathan, what's up?" Audrey asked abruptly, setting down her pen and twisting her chair to face him.

"What do you mean?" he asked innocently, lifting his head just far enough to glance across at her.

"Don't play dumb with me," she said, shaking her head. "You've been acting weird lately." He raised an eyebrow, and she amended, "Weirder than usual."

"I'm just tired," he said off-handedly, and then pulled a new incident form toward him to start fixing his mistakes.

"Nathan," Audrey said wearily, and a bit impatiently. "You know you can talk to me if something's bothering you. That's what friends do, right?" When he didn't respond, she added, "I'm just worried about you. You've been stranger ever since Jess left."

Nathan tensed slightly but didn't look up from the line he was supposed to be filling in. She was right, that was about the time where things had changed, but it wasn't Jess that was keeping him up at night. It was Audrey. Audrey and a kiss on the cheek that had set off an explosion inside of him. He had thought at first that his sense of touch was coming back, but he hadn't been able to feel anything else since. Nothing, except her.

Before his partner could bully an answer out of him, the phone on his desk rang, and they both jumped at the noise. "Saved by the bell," he said with a slight smirk in her direction, and then he lifted the headset. "Detective Wuornos."

"Wuornos, it's Gary Jorgenson from the morgue," came the response.

"Alright, just a second," he said and pressed the speaker button before setting the earpiece down again. Audrey came over to lean against his desk so she could hear. "Okay, Jorgenson, we're both here. What've you got?"

"I IDed your guy, his name's Jeffrey Halter, 43," Jorgenson explained in a lazy drawl, and Nathan quickly scrawled out the name onto a notepad. "Cause of death was definitely the car. He's got a serious case of the blunt force traumas. We ran a tox screen and it came back clean, zero alcohol and the only drug in his system was amoxicillin."

"Which is?" Audrey prompted.

"Antibiotic. Commonly used to treat infections, like ear and sinus stuff," Jorgenson answered, a bit patronisingly. Nathan bit his tongue to stop himself from commenting on the guy's attitude. He wasn't a huge fan of the new guy from their previous interactions, and this certainly wasn't helping any.

"So our guy jumped in front of a car because his ears hurt," Audrey said sceptically. "That's a little melodramatic, don't you think?"

"I thought so too, so I looked into it a bit more," Jorgenson said. "I checked his ears, and that's when I found something a little strange."  _Great,_ Nathan thought unenthusiastically. "There were trace particulates in his ear canal and all the way through his sinuses. Nose, eyes, throat. There was something off about the sensory nerves too, so I decided to give his brain a bit of a peek. Found the same particulates inside of his skull and even throughout the brain stem."

"Okay, so these particulates, did you figure out what they are?" Audrey asked.

"Uh,  _duh_ ," Jorgenson said. "Sand."

"Sand," Nathan echoed blankly. "We do live on the coast, any chance that's how it got into him?"

"Dude, I don't care if this guy lived in a little cave on the seashore his whole life, that wouldn't be enough to get sand into his brain. That stuff definitely did not get there by accident," Jorgenson said, and Nathan bit back a groan.  _Double great._

"Alright, thanks, Greg," Audrey said, and she leant over to hang up the phone. Nathan didn't comment on the name mistake, well used to them by now, as he scrubbed a hand over his face and then looked up at his partner. She had that familiar look in her eyes, the one that always seemed to be followed by them nearly getting murdered by something supernatural. This was so not what he wanted to deal with today. "So where should we start?" Audrey asked.

"I guess we should try to find out a little more about this Jeffery Halter and see if there's any reason someone would want to build a sandcastle inside his skull," Nathan responded and stood up. As he grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and slipped into it, he added, "So much for a normal case."


	2. Halter House

A quick trip to city records got them the information they needed on Jeffrey Halter. His address was listed as a rental house on Grove Lane, not two blocks from where he'd died. Deciding to start there, they climbed into Nathan's truck without any further discussion.

The drive across town was filled with talk of the case. While Nathan concentrated on driving, Audrey read from the file and told him about anything that seemed worth noting. "Well it looks like he was pretty new to Haven; he's only lived here about six years. Ew, he was a health insurance agent. That sounds like reason enough to commit suicide to me." Nathan didn't comment much while she talked, just grateful that she'd forgotten about their earlier conversation for now.

When he pulled the truck up to the kerb, Audrey peered across him to get a better look at the house. "It's so – quaint," she said, clearly surprised. 'Quaint' would be the perfect word to describe the house, Nathan thought. It was small and square, made of white wood and flat black shingles and dark blue shutters around the wide windows. The yard was green and obviously recently trimmed, and a little flowering bush flourished beside the front step.

"I don't know, it looks a bit depressingly mundane to me," Nathan offered and gave her a wry smile as he slipped out onto the pavement. Audrey came around the hood to join him a second later, and they started up the front walk. "His car is gone," he noted, nodding in the direction of the vacant driveway, where dull black oil patches stood out against the pale concrete.

Nathan tried the front door and made an annoyed sound when the knob wouldn't turn. He turned to make a comment about it to Audrey when he saw her kneel down and pick up a rock from beneath the flower bush. Even with the short glimpse he'd gotten, Nathan could tell there was something off about the rock she'd chosen. She smirked as she flipped it over and pushed aside a plastic flap, pulling out a brass key. "A hide-a-key?" he asked, torn between scepticism and amusement. "Didn't anyone tell him no one falls for those?"

"Apparently not," she responded as she inserted the key into the lock and twisted. The door opened with an audible click. "I do have to admit this is nicer than having to break down the door."

"Less fun though," Nathan argued, making her smile.

The inside of the house looked as standard as the outside. It was floored in light wood, the walls were painted in neutral, flat colours, and the living room furniture looked well-used and comfortable. A narrow hallway ran the length of the house, with a half-opened door in the middle, and ended in a pale yellow kitchen. The only unusual thing was an intense aroma hanging in the air that made Nathan wrinkle his nose.

"Think he takes his coffee strong enough?" he commented in disgust. Shaking his head, he began wandering around the living room. There was an old bookshelf against the wall near the window, and he browsed the titles curiously. Above a row of books that all looked like they were law and regulations studies, probably from work, were a set of battered Grisham's' and Kings' and Koontz'. Nothing all that unusual for a middle-aged man, really.

"Looks like these were all clients he's been working with recently," Audrey said from the coffee table, flipping through a stack of papers that had been left scattered across the surface. "All of them have annotations and notes dated within the last week or so."

"So if this turns out to not have been suicide," Nathan said, ignoring the exasperated noise she made at his reluctance to admit it might be, "then one of those people could've had motive if their policy wasn't going the way they wanted."

Audrey had opened her mouth to respond when there was a heavy thud from the next room, and they both froze. In an instant, both of them had drawn their sidearms, and they began moving carefully down the hall to the doorway where the noise had come from. As they got closer, they could hear a dull scraping, faint clicks, and raspy breathing. Flattening themselves to the wall, Nathan drew back the safety on his gun and took a breath.

"Haven Police, identify yourself," he called out. There was no answer, just more scratching and tapping and panting. He exchanged a quick glance with Audrey and then threw himself around the corner, training his gun on the first sign of motion he found. "Police, put your ha-" He trailed off mid-sentence, staring in shock at the intruder.

It was a dog.

Some sort of mixed breed, it was black and slightly on the fat side. The amount of white around the muzzle meant it was probably fairly old, and it stood in the middle of the room and gazed up at them with bright brown eyes, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.

"Well I doubt that's our suspect," he said, holstering his gun again.

"You never know, this is Haven," Audrey pointed out, but she had put away hers as well. While she began looking around the room, Nathan knelt down and extended a hand toward the dog. It sniffed him and then licked his fingers, finally leaning its head into his palm looking for affection.

"Hey there," he said with a small smile, scratching idly at the dog's ears. "What's your name?" He grasped the little metal tags hanging from the leather collar and twisted them so he could read the inscriptions. "Delilah. That's pretty." The dog lay down on her side with a weary huff, and he switched to rubbing her rounded stomach with a grin.

"Would you look at that," Audrey remarked, and he glanced up at her. "You're just as cute with animals as you are with babies."

Giving her a sarcastic look, he straightened up – the dog made a noise of displeasure at being left – and moved to examine the night table. The blankets on the bed were untidily made, probably done in a hurry, and there was a noticeable depression in the middle where he assumed the dog had been sleeping. The night table held only a lamp, a digital alarm clock, and a handful of spare change and crumpled receipts.

"Wonder what kind of music he listened to," Audrey mused, staring at the stereo system on the chest-of-drawers curiously. "Marilyn Manson, maybe?" She pressed the power button. A blast of trumpets came out, so loud that Nathan physically staggered and dropped the receipt he'd been looking at so he could cover his ears against the noise. Audrey hastily slammed her palm against the button, shutting it off.

"That was unexpected," Nathan said, rubbing at one of his ears in an attempt to make the ringing go away.

"I'm starting to get the feeling this guy may have been a little whacked out," Audrey said. "World's strongest coffee, loudest jazz music I've ever heard. He's like some sort of extremist."

Nathan's brow furrowed. "Are you sure that word means what you think it does?"

Audrey shot him a reproving look. "I just mean that everything he does, he does it to a crazy level," she said.

"Let's check in the bathroom, see if there's anything unusual in there," he said, nodding toward the door behind her. When he made to follow her, he stumbled, not having realised that the dog was standing at his ankles. Audrey muffled her laughter when the dog nudged against his leg, panting happily.

"Looks like someone has a new friend," she said with a smile.

"I'm a popular guy," he said with a shrug, and then stepped over the dog to follow Audrey into the bathroom. It was small and appeared just like expected; a frayed toothbrush and paste on the sink, a tiny mirror mounted on the wall, a faded towel hanging from the hook on the back of the door.

"Amoxicillin," Audrey read off the label of a tiny prescription bottle on the sink. "This was what they said was in his system, right? Prescribed by Dr Kelly Marlow."

"I know Kelly," Nathan said as he checked the inside of the shower curiously. "Good guy. We can stop by and ask him a few questions about Halter if we need to."

"You know every doctor in this town," Audrey said lightly. As she moved to put the bottle down, she paused, and her eyes narrowed. "Nathan, come look at this."

Nathan climbed out of the bathtub and joined her at the sink, squinting down at the spot she was pointing to. There were coarse flecks on the white ceramic, and they looked a bit like –

Audrey had drawn a latex glove from her pocket and slipped it on, running a finger over the spot. When she lifted it to her face, he saw the answer in her eyes before she had said it. "I think it's sand," she said and glanced up at him with wide eyes.

"Sand in his ears and brain and now his sink," Nathan listed off, trying not to let his confusion come through in his voice. "I have a feeling I'm not going to like where this leads."

"Is there some tape around here?" Audrey asked. "We should try to get a sample of this stuff and send it back to the lab. See if it matches the stuff they found in Halter." Nathan rummaged through drawers in the bedroom until he found a roll of scotch tape on the chest-of-drawers. Audrey pressed the strip of tape to the sink, picking up several grains of white sand, and then folded it over on itself to make a slide.

"Neat trick," Nathan said as she tucked the tape slip into a rumpled evidence bag he'd found in his coat pocket. "I knew there was a reason we kept you around."

Finished in the bathroom, they went the rest of the way down the hall to the kitchen, stepping around Delilah, who was still following Nathan everywhere. The smell in the kitchen was so strong that Nathan had to pull the collar of his shirt up over his nose, grimacing as the overwhelming scent tried to trigger a headache. Audrey threw open the window above the sink and dumped the rest of the coffee pot down the drain.

"You know, this all looks like your typical bachelor pad kitchen to me," she said, browsing through the cupboards. "Basic staples, mismatched dishes." There was a day's worth of dirty plates in one side of the sink, and a half-drank cup of the insane coffee sitting on the countertop. Nathan opened the fridge and saw packaged lunch meats, a half gallon of milk, a bag of carrots that looked on the verge of turning, and a six-pack of cheap beer.

He closed the door just in time to see Audrey stick a finger into the coffee cup and he made a noise of protest. "What?" she asked, pulling it out and sniffing curiously.

"Parker, you should probably stop sticking your hands into unknown substances," he pointed out.

"It's coffee, not acid," she said unconcernedly. Before he could comment, she had sucked the coffee from her finger and then grimaced. "Disgusting and cold coffee, but definitely just coffee."

Nathan couldn't restrain his eye roll at her behaviour. "Alright, but if you start blasting Timberlake, I'm going to just shoot you, okay?"

They finished their search of the kitchen, not finding anything else of interest, and headed back to the front door, ready to take their things to the office and call it quits for the day. Audrey had just grabbed the stack of papers from the coffee table and opened the front door when a quiet whine made Nathan stop and look back. "Wait," he said when he saw Delilah standing a few feet behind him, staring up at him with doleful eyes. "What do we do about her? We can't just leave her here alone."

"Does Haven have a pound?" Audrey suggested. Nathan grimaced, not wanting to think about how the poor old dog would handle being shut away in a kennel. He hesitated a second longer and then let out a low whistle, patting a hand against his thigh for good measure. Delilah didn't need to be told twice, following him out the door. Nathan determinedly ignored Audrey's quiet laughter.

"You know, Nathan," she said when they'd reached the truck. "I'm pretty sure it's basic police protocol that you don't bring anyone related to the case home with you."

Nathan seized the dog around the middle and heaved her into the cab of the truck, before climbing up after her. "So if someone asks, I'm putting her in witness protection," he said with a small smirk. Delilah made herself comfortable in the middle of the bench, laying her head in his lap and starting to snore almost instantly. "Besides," he added as he shifted the truck into drive, his grin widening, "she'll be the perfect home security system. The Chief's allergic to dogs."


	3. The Suspect List

Audrey was already in the office when Nathan came in the next morning, and she smiled up at him from behind her paperwork. "You going to start coming in late all the time?" she asked with a laugh. He didn't respond as he placed a cup of coffee and a muffin wrapped in a napkin onto her desk. "Mm, never mind. If you're going to keep bringing me breakfast then be late whenever you want."

"I thought you might say that," he said and settled himself down at his desk with his own breakfast. "Sorry I was late. I ran a bit behind making sure everything was set up at the house before I left."

"Oh yes, how is the new lady house guest?" Audrey asked teasingly.

"Absolutely charming. She snores louder than a freight train and somehow manages to take up more than half of the bed by herself," Nathan replied dryly, but she still caught the smile that had flashed across his face. "So what've you been working on?"

"Put together a list of all the people from those claims on Halter's table," she explained. "I figured we could go and talk to them and see what they know. See if any of them have enough of a problem with the guy to merit committing murder."

She could tell that Nathan was thinking about the fact that they still hadn't even proven that it was murder yet, but for once he kept his scepticism to himself. "Sounds good," he agreed. "How many are we looking at?"

"Six total," she said, consulting her list. "Two whose policies were granted, so I doubt it's either of them. Then there's one who only got partial assistance and three more who got denied."

"So we've got four to start with, and then two more if none of the others pans out," Nathan concluded with a nod. "This is going to be a long day. Alright, what's our first stop?"

* * *

Faerie Tale Books was a tiny little place, crammed into the building strip between a pizzeria and a hardware store. The Yardley family had owned the bookshop for generations, according to Nathan, and it was kept stocked with the broadest range of little-known gems that the narrow shelves could carry. The store's name was painted on the enormous front window in a curly script and edged with little yellow stars.

Nathan held the door for Audrey as they entered, and a little bell jingled somewhere in the depths of the shop. It only took a few seconds for a woman to appear from between two shelves and she smiled at them brightly. "Nathan, good to see you again," she said cheerfully. "And you, you must be Agent Parker. I've heard so much about you."

A couple months ago, that sort of statement would have made Audrey uncomfortable and maybe even suspicious. As it were, she had long since learned that nothing moved faster in Haven than gossip and it didn't surprise her that strangers could guess who she was within seconds. It also didn't help that it turned out half of the town apparently knew Lucy and made the connection, not that many of them bothered to share more than a few scattered tidbits or vague allusions with her.

"Parker, this is Marion Yardley," Nathan introduced and then jammed his hands into his pockets.

"I can't believe I've never been in here before," Audrey said, looking with awe at the rows of books just waiting to be read.

"Aw, you're an avid reader, aren't you?" Marion said knowingly. "I can see it in your eyes. Let me guess; mysteries, fantasies, suspense, and a little touch of romance. That's your genre, right?"

"That's amazing," Audrey said.

"Marion can guess the perfect book for anyone she meets," Nathan supplied. "As far as I know, she's never been wrong."

Marion smiled in pleasure. "It's a gift," she said simply. "When you spend as much time in the books as I do, you learn them just like you do people. Now, how can I help you?"

"We're actually here about this," Audrey said, switching instantly to business as she pulled the form from the file she was carrying. "This is a health insurance claim you filed recently, is that right?"

"Yes, just last week," Marion said, looking confused as she glanced from it to the detectives. "Why are you asking about this? Did someone finally turn that despicable man in for denying perfectly legitimate claims?"

"Jeffrey Halter?" Nathan asked, gauging her reaction.

"That's him," Marion said. Her arms crossed, and she looked decidedly less pleasant than she had when they had entered. "That man is like an airport paperback; everything about him is cheap and fake. Thomas has cancer, and our policy clearly says that the insurance company will pay eighty percent of the costs for his treatment. But now Halter is trying to tell us that they'll only pay half. Do you know how much that extra thirty percent is going to cost us? We could lose everything trying to pay those medical bills off. We might have to sell this place, and it's been in Tom's family since his great-grandfather built it. It broke his heart just to talk about it."

Audrey and Nathan exchanged quick glances, and when he nodded shortly, she turned back to Marion and said, "Jeffrey Halter is dead."

Marion's eyes widened for a moment, and she lifted one hand to cover her mouth. Her surprise and horror lasted approximately six seconds, and then an expression of indifference crossed her face. "Was it the car accident yesterday? I'd heard there was one, but nobody could tell me for sure who got hit," she said. Without waiting for an answer, she continued, "I wish I could spare some sympathy for him, but," she paused to quickly cross herself, "if it had to be anyone, at least it was a crook like him. Now maybe the agency will send a better agent out here so people like us can actually get the help we need." Then her eyes narrowed, and she asked, "Wait, why are you asking me about this? You – you don't think I had anything to do with it. He was hit by a car, it was an accident."

"We're just trying to get an understanding of this guy," Audrey said quickly, trying to calm her. Agitated people in Haven usually led to bad things happening. "We don't have records of any family for him, so we figure his most recent clients would have been the last ones to have seen him before he died. The last time you saw him, did anything seem different to you? Did he seem – strange?"

"He was always strange," Marion said bluntly. "He had no people skills at all. Heart like stone, that man. He just looked right at my poor Tom and wrinkled up his nose like he thought Tom was disgusting, and then just told him that he couldn't do a thing more to help. It was sickening. No one will be missing him, that's for sure."

"Alright, thank you, Mrs Yardley," Audrey said, and she and Nathan left the woman looking rather bitter. "Well," Audrey said once the door had closed behind them, "she clearly wasn't a fan of our guy."

"Not that I really blame her," Nathan said with a shrug. "Her husband's got some pretty serious prostate cancer from what I've heard. Those treatments are the only things that'll give him a hope of lasting more than a year."

"Still doesn't give her the right to kill over it, though," Audrey said. She glanced over her shoulder at Marion, who was watching them with narrowed eyes through the front window, and felt an uneasy sweeping sensation in her stomach that made her pulse quicken. "I'm definitely still keeping her on our suspect list."

Nathan didn't look pleased about it, but his lack of argument told her that he agreed, even if it was grudging. He jerked open the door of the truck and hauled himself inside, and then looked over at her. "Where next?"

* * *

Audrey stared across at the old brick building as she slid down out of Nathan's truck, her mouth gaping open. "Wow," she said. "When I'm old and dying, I want to come live here."

The Sunnyside Haven Hospice Centre was a low building with white windows and a sweeping lawn. Wide trees dotted the yard, casting shade over little metal park benches and stone bird baths. A few elderly patients were strolling over the grass or sitting on benches, accompanied either by scrub-wearing nurses or younger looking visitors. Overall, the entire place looked utterly serene.

"I have a hard time imaging you ever living somewhere where people cater to your every whim," Nathan said as he joined her in their steady march up to the doors. "You're too stubborn and independent."

"And you have room to talk," Audrey responded with a smirk. He didn't deny it, just shrugged. They reached the large double doors at the front of the building and stepped into a warm lobby. A plump woman in flowered scrubs was sitting behind the desk, and she beamed at them when they approached her.

"Detective Wuornos, Agent Parker, how can I help you?" she asked. Her name tag read 'Ginger,' an ironic contrast to her jet black hair.

"We're looking for," Audrey checked the name off the paper in her file, "Lillian Demarcio. Do you know where we could find her?"

"Oh yes," Ginger said, looking suddenly more sombre. "The poor dear'll be in her room. But you won't get a word from her if you're here asking questions. She can't speak. Nearly comatose, she is, the poor thing. But her son should be in there with her, he is most days. Sweet Calvin, he comes up here every day to sit with her. He's a good man." She bustled around the desk and gestured for them to follow her as she started down a wide hallway.

The nurse stopped at a partially opened door on the left side of the hall and stuck her head in. "Calvin? There are some people here to talk to you." He must have given his assent because she pushed the door open and gestured for them to enter.

An old man was sitting in an armchair beside a bed, which supported an even older looking woman. "Calvin, this is Detective Wuornos and Agent Parker. They have some questions about Lily."

"Thank you, Ginger. How can I help you?" the old man asked, slipping off a pair of reading glasses and setting them aside.

"We have some questions about your mother's health insurance policy," Nathan said, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

Calvin looked confused, but Audrey continued before he could start asking questions. "Is this your mother's most recent insurance claim?" she asked, handing him the slip of paper from her folder.

"Yes, I talked to Mr Halter about this just last week," Calvin said, squinting at the form. "He told me that the insurance company isn't going to keep paying for my mother's life support. That she's been on it for too long and that I should consider letting her go." He handed the paper back with a sad look. "How can I do that? Just let her die? She comes out of it sometimes, you know. She'll come back to me for a while. I can't just give up on her if there's a chance that I can save her."

"Mr Halter, as in Jeffrey Halter," Audrey clarified, and Calvin nodded.

"Strange man, but he's been good to Mother and me for the last few years," he said. "Got us an extension on our aid last year so I could afford to keep Mother here." Calvin suddenly looked concerned. "Why? He didn't get himself into trouble, did he?"

"Trouble?" Nathan asked curiously.

"Like I said, he was a bit strange," the old man supplied. "And he was acting odd the last time I saw him. Distracted. It was like he didn't hear half of what I said to him." Nathan gave Audrey a meaningful look, and she nodded in understanding. This wasn't the first time someone had told them that it seemed like Halter hadn't heard them.

"Did you notice anything else unusual?" Audrey asked.

"Nothing besides his usual strangeness," Calvin said with a short shrug.

"Alright, thank you," Audrey said. "If we have any more questions, we'll contact you."

"I'll be here," he said, relaxing back into his armchair. "I'm always here."

Audrey hesitated, staring at the woman in the bed. She hadn't moved since they'd been there, hadn't even opened her eyes. For all Audrey could tell, Lillian Demarcio could very well be dead. "Mr Demarcio, if you don't mind my asking, have you given any thought to letting your mother go?"

"Don't have to," Calvin said firmly. "I'm not doing it. She's still in there, I know it. I'm not giving up on her." Audrey frowned sceptically. "Would you be so willing to give up on Lucy?"

Audrey froze and stared at the old man like she was seeing him for the first time. As often as these obscure references to the woman who might be her mother happened, she never quite got used to the shock. "You knew Lucy?" she asked.

"She would've understood," Calvin said. "Let me show you something, Agent Parker." He held out his hand, indicating for her to do the same. She felt Nathan take a protective step closer as she offered her hand. Calvin took her by the wrist and drew her closer to the bed until he finally lifted his mother's frail hand and set it in Audrey's palm.

"Mother," he crooned, stroking her thin grey hair. "Mother, it's me, Cal. Can you hear me? Let me know you can hear me." He kept whispering to her for a few seconds, to the point that Audrey was considering just leaving because obviously nothing was happening. And then suddenly the fingers on her palm twitched, and she leapt backwards in surprise, stumbling back against Nathan's chest as the hurried movement sent her mind spinning through a wave of vertigo.

"Parker, you alright?" Nathan asked anxiously, his hands gripping her upper arms to keep her standing.

"She moved," Audrey said, staring at the old woman in awe.

"I told you she's still in there," Calvin said and fixed her with a pointed stare. "She's there, and she hears me and responds. Her body just needs time to heal and then she'll be back with me. I can't give up on her if she's still got a chance."

Audrey nodded. "Thank you for your time, Mr Demarcio," she said, and he gave a sombre nod. Nathan kept a hand on her arm as they started back down the hall. They were back inside Nathan's truck before he finally broke the silence.

"You sure you're okay, Parker?" he asked, giving her a concerned look. "You're being quiet."

Audrey smiled a little at the tease. "I was just thinking if that guy's story was true, that woman's life would be so miserable. Being aware of her surroundings but being incapable of really reacting to them. That'd be a nightmare. I think I'd rather just die."

"You don't believe him then?" Nathan asked with raised eyebrows. "I thought it was your goal in life to believe in all impossible things."

"Yeah well someone once told me that it's better to eliminate all the other options first," she replied. "I've seen dead people twitch before, it can't be too impractical to think a brain dead person could too." Nathan nodded thoughtfully and then flipped the ignition.

"Alright, on to lucky suspect number three," he said and glanced over while waiting for her directions. "Who've we got?"

"Someone named James Daley," Audrey said. She saw Nathan's jaw tighten. "You know him?"

Nathan grimaced and shifted the truck into gear. "This is not going to be a fun visit."


	4. An Uneasy Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Language warning, there's a bit of cursing in this chapter.

The Haven city park was chilly as Nathan and Audrey climbed out of the Ford. There were only a handful of people around. An older man sat alone at a picnic table, scribbling in a notebook. A young woman was keeping an eye on three kids racing around the playset. Near the other side of the lawn were two teenagers, sitting on a park bench and apparently glued together at the lips.

"That's him there," Nathan said, pointing across to where a man was bending over a flowerbed.

"A gardener?" Audrey asked. "We're worried about confronting a gardener?"

"Trust me, when you meet him, you'll understand," Nathan said and set off across the park. Audrey had to half-jog to catch up with his long strides. When they were only a few yards away, Nathan called, "Hey Jimmy."

The man straightened up and looked back at them, and then made a loud, irritated noise. "Ah hell, Wuornos, whaddya want this time?" he snapped, folding his arms, one of them in a thick cast, across his chest. As they reached him, he drew himself up to his full height, but facing off with someone as tall as Nathan, it didn't do much good.

"Jimmy, this is my partner, Agent Parker," Nathan said without any acknowledgement of the hostility in Jimmy Daley's voice.

"Well you can recruit yourself as many pretty skirts as you want, it ain't gonna make me wanna talk to you any more than I already don't," Jimmy spat.

"Be nice," said Audrey, smirking. "We're just here to ask a couple questions." Jimmy didn't respond except to raise a challenging eyebrow that she took as permission to continue. "You recently filed a health insurance claim?"

"That's your business how?" Jimmy retorted.

Nathan grunted. "Just answer the question."

"Not 'til I know why you all give a damn 'bout my health," Jimmy said stubbornly. "I got my rights, you know."

"How about because the insurance agent that denied your claim was killed yesterday and you have a motive that gives us enough probable cause to drag your ass down to the station," Audrey said coolly. "That sound like a good enough reason to answer our questions?"

Jimmy looked sour, but he nodded. "Alright, just say what you want and lemme get back to my work then."

"You don't seem surprised to hear that Mr Halter is dead," Audrey noted idly.

"Yeah well, the guy had it comin', didn't he, way he was," Jimmy said indifferently. "I knew someone would've offed him 'ventually. Wasn't me though, since you're gonna ask."

"You didn't like him," Audrey said.

Jimmy snorted. "Not many did. The man was an arrogant bastard, going 'round and telling people their insurance won't cover things. He came to me last week to say they won't pay the doctor bills for my busted arm 'cause it was a work-related injury. Said it ain't their area."

"When was the last time you saw Mr Halter?" Nathan asked. Audrey wasn't paying attention anymore, having spotted something in the nearby wheelbarrow, and she started towards it.

"Woulda been Thursday, I guess," Jimmy said, watching her suspiciously. "What you think you're doing there? Stay outta my things." Audrey reached for the wheelbarrow but Jimmy lunged toward her, brandishing a hand rake in her face threateningly. "I said stay out!"

Nathan drew his gun pointedly. "Put the rake down," he demanded.

"Tell your Barbie doll to keep her hands to herself then," Jimmy said angrily, but he dropped the rake into the wheelbarrow.

"What'd you see, Parker?" Nathan asked.

Audrey nudged aside a few loose tools to be able to read the label on the bag near the bottom, and then she looked up at Nathan grimly. "Sand." Immediately Nathan walked over to peer in at the bag of white sand beneath the gardening tools.

"I'm a landscaper," Jimmy said. "Course I got sand. Use it 'round the trees, keeps the ground moist and like." Audrey looked around and saw that there were circles of pale sand around the bases of most of the trees, but she still didn't feel comfortable with the discovery.

"It's the same colour as the stuff we found," Nathan said, holstering his gun again. "Jimmy, we're going to have to take a sample of this."

"Hell no you ain't stealing my sand!" the gardener argued. "What you need it for anyway? Halter otherwise with a bag of sand, was he?"

Ignoring him, Nathan dug another evidence bag out of his pocket and scooped a small handful of the sand into it. As Jimmy glared daggers at him, Audrey asked, "Was there anything strange about Halter the last time you saw him?"

"Never wasn't strange," Jimmy growled. "Am I sad the guy died? Absolutely not. Deserved it if you ask me. But like I said, I wasn't the one to kill him."

"Maybe not on purpose," Audrey goaded. "Maybe you didn't mean to do it. But maybe when he told you you'd have to front all those bills yourself, maybe you got a little worked up. Agitated. Did it make you mad, Jimmy?" The gardener looked annoyed, frowning at her with his jaw clenched. Nathan made a warning noise from behind her, but she ignored him. "Pissed you off, didn't it? That some snooty little guy in a business suit told you that your accident just wasn't worth his time. Did you lose your temper with him? Rough him up a bit? Show him who the bigger man was? You can tell us; we don't care. Arresting you isn't worth our time either."

Jimmy had gone red in the face and took a step closer to her. Nathan was immediately right behind her, making her feel a bit claustrophobic being stuck between the two men. "You listen to me here, Barbie," Jimmy ground out through his teeth. "I ain't done nothing wrong. I ain't no killer. And I don't need some hoity-toity government cop princess coming down here and interrupting me at work and accusing me of whacking off scummy insurance agents. So I suggest you get the hell outta my face and let me alone."

Audrey and Jimmy glared at each other for a minute, and then Audrey smiled. "Alright, I think that's all our questions. Thanks for your time, Mr Daley," she said. She slipped out from between the men and started back across the park. It only took Nathan a few seconds to catch up with her.

"Parker, are you  _trying_  to get yourself killed?" he asked incredulously. "You have got to stop provoking potential murderers. One of these times you're going to piss off the right person and then where will you be?"

"I'm fine," Audrey pointed out. "I'm not a walking sandbox here, so I think we can scratch Troubled off that guy's character list. Or at least Haven Troubled. He's clearly just a tad troubled in other ways."

"Well I'm still sending this sand into the lab to see if it's a match," Nathan said, giving up on the argument for now. "Just because he didn't telepathically load you with sand doesn't mean he didn't get it into Halter some other way."

As they entered his truck, Audrey glanced across at Nathan and grinned. "You know, I don't get what you were saying," she said casually. "I thought Jimmy was rather charming. Very sweet guy, really." Nathan smirked wryly in response.

Audrey suddenly frowned, rubbing a hand against her stomach. "Parker, you okay?" he asked carefully, trying not to panic and let his imagination get away from him envisioning all kinds of horrifying things that could happen in a place like Haven.

"Yeah," she said, waving away the hand he'd put on her shoulder. "I really should've had more than just that muffin this morning. Think we've got time for a lunch break?"

Nathan glanced at his watch, seeing it was well past the time they would normally have taken their break. "I could do lunch," he agreed. "Really, anything to get away from interrogating possible sand murderers." Audrey laughed appreciatively, and she seemed to be completely fine again. Still, as Nathan drove them to the diner, he kept a worried eye on his partner.

After all, this was Haven and she was Audrey Parker. He could never be too careful.

. . . . .

Audrey could feel Nathan watching her from across the table. She tried to ignore it as she enjoyed her sandwich, but it was a bit unnerving, especially considering how often it had been happening lately. He always tried to hide it, but she would catch him staring at her in the office or in the truck when he was driving them to calls. Not to mention his strange sudden attraction to hovering around her while trying to act, unconvincingly, like he wasn't doing anything. There was definitely something up with her partner, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Taking a sip of her iced tea, Audrey looked up at him. Nathan's gaze slipped down to the pancakes he had been robotically eating. "Okay, talk, mister," she said, setting down her glass and folding her arms on her chest.

"So what do you think about our suspect list so far?" Nathan asked, glancing over at the manila folder on the tabletop. "Personally I'm putting my money on Jim."

"That's not what I meant," Audrey said flatly. "Nathan, what's wrong?"

"Audrey," Nathan said, startling her with the use of her first name. He reserved that for more serious conversations. "Not now."

She leant back in the vinyl seat, examining his face. The rings beneath his eyes had been growing steadily darker over the last couple weeks, but his gaze was pointed and pleading. Chewing on her bottom lip for a moment, Audrey nodded. "Okay.  _Later_ ," she agreed, emphasising the last word so he'd know she wasn't going to just let it go. "I don't know, I still think Marion is more likely than Jim. For him, it would be personal revenge. She'd have done it to protect someone she cares about. That just seems more likely to me."

"Well with that logic it could very well have been Calvin Demarcio too," Nathan pointed out. "To save his mother."

"He's like eighty years old," Audrey said with a shrug. "So unless this turns out to be a Trouble, I highly doubt he has the energy to do something like that. And anyway, he seemed to like Halter. Kept talking about how Halter had helped them out so much. If he was going to go after anyone, I doubt it would be the one person on his side."

"And to make it all more fun, we don't even have any proof that this was murder, or that it was even one of these three," Nathan said and rubbed his upper lip like he was prone to doing under stress. "It could be completely unrelated. We don't know who did it or what did it or even if there was anything done by anything at all. We could just be chasing smoke here."

Audrey surveyed him curiously. "And that makes this different from any other case how?"

Nathan stabbed at his pancakes with his fork and then gave a grudging nod. "I suppose that's true," he agreed. "So were we going to visit our last, full-coverage-denial suspect next?"

"Unless Mr Paws tries to rob the craft store again," Audrey replied, finally drawing a smile out of Nathan. No sooner had she said it then the radio on Nathan's belt began crackling.

"Nate, honey," the elderly dispatcher said, "you'd best get yourself down to the Bucket. Jed and Lou are at it again."

Nathan sighed and lifted the radio. "Thanks, Laverne. We'll be there in a bit."

"So, what's the story on Jed and Lou?" Audrey asked with a smirk.

"Old war buddies that have known each other since they were kids. Every couple weeks they get together for drinks and then spend the afternoon yelling and cussing at each other for everything and anything imaginable." He didn't look hurried as he cut another bite from his pancakes. At Audrey's raised eyebrows he continued, "They're harmless, just loud. Nothing worth wasting good pancakes over. We can deal with them when we finish lunch."

Audrey picked up her sandwich with a wry smirk. "Gotta love being a small town cop."


	5. The Final Suspect

"Well, that was fun," Audrey grumbled sarcastically as they climbed back into the safety of the truck cab. While dealing with the drunken old men arguing in front of the bar, the skies had quite suddenly opened up and drenched them all in freezing rain. It hadn't bothered Nathan much, but Audrey was shivering madly. The moment his key was in the ignition, she cranked his heaters as high as they'd go.

"They were a bit more drunk than usual," Nathan remarked conversationally, but he was fighting a smile. Not being able to feel the cold autumn storm, he'd found it amusing to watch Audrey try to look intimidating as she yelled at the old men to break it up, all the while looking rather like a drowned rat. She was less than pleased with him at that point.

"Your heaters are slow," she complained, pulling his coat tighter around her body.

"We'll head back to the station, and you can warm up there," he said, turning onto the road.

Audrey suddenly sat up, all signs of irritation gone. "Wait, that last Halter suspect's house is on our way back. We should stop while we're here."

"If you say so, Nancy Drew," he said, shaking his head but flipping on his truck's turn signal and veering onto the residential road they needed. He had come to the conclusion long ago that no matter how much effort he put into the act, he would probably never fully understand his partner. Her slightly bi-polar switch from being sulky to being eager was practically a non-item in the long list of strange things about her. Even if he was pretty sure that the best idea would be to get them both inside before they got hypothermia, he knew she wouldn't back down now that she was on track.

Squinting through the rain to read the house numbers, he finally found the one they were looking for and pulled into the driveway. They both jumped out and almost jogged up to the porch to take shelter beneath the small awning. Nathan reached over Audrey's head to knock at the door, and they waited in anticipation for a response. There was no noise from inside; no lights behind the curtained windows.

"Think they're gone?" Audrey asked. Without waiting for an answer, she stepped off the porch and stood on her toes to peer through a crack in the curtains. "It's all dark in here," she shouted over the sound of the storm.

"Avoiding us?" Nathan offered, walking around to the other side of the porch to peek in through another window. The dining room he was looking into was immaculately clean and completely dark.

"Let's check with the neighbours," Audrey said, nodding in the direction of the next house over. Lights were glowing in these windows and a car in the driveway. They cut across the lawns and mounted the front steps, Audrey hammering expectantly on the door.

After a moment of rustling sounds and high-pitched barking, the door opened a bit to reveal an older woman in a cardigan. "Nathan Wuornos?" she asked, clearly confused. "What brings you up here in this weather?"

"Mrs Tanner," Nathan responded, quickly casting a glance at the house number and feeling dumb for not having recognised it.

"You know each other?" Audrey asked, glancing up at her partner.

"Mrs Tanner was my high school English teacher," Nathan admitted awkwardly.

"Bright kid, he was," Mrs Tanner said with an affectionate smile. "A real knack for writing, he had. I remember a short story he wrote for my class, must have been only fifteen at the time. Was one of the best things I've ever read in all my years teaching. Got it from his mother, he did. Jane always was a creative soul. Lord knows his father isn't."

Nathan was refusing to meet anyone's gaze, his hands deep in his pockets. It might just have been his body's natural reaction to the cold it couldn't feel, but Audrey could have sworn that his cheeks were red. "Anyway, Mrs T, we're actually here about your neighbours," he said, gesturing over his shoulder at the darkened house.

"Right," Audrey said. She could tell that he didn't want to reminisce anymore, but she stored the information away for a later date. This was the first time she'd really heard mention about Nathan's mother, and it had sparked a sudden curiosity in her. But right now they were working a case. "Do you happen to know where they are? We need to ask them a few questions."

"The Cartwrights?" Mrs Tanner asked, her forehead furrowing. "France by now, I'd imagine. The poor things are taking a vacation. I'm watching the house for them while they're gone. Watering the plants and bringing in the paper, things like that."

Audrey and Nathan exchanged quick glances. "When did they leave?" Nathan asked, and underneath his neutral tone there was a hint of suspicion.

"Just yesterday," Mrs Tanner answered, looking more and more confused with each new second. "They've been having all this trouble with their daughter being sick, but then they came to me this weekend and said they'd gotten their financial issues fixed and they were going to take a vacation to help everyone relax from all the stress, and would I watch the house for them. Why? Nothing's happened to them, has it?"

"No, we just wanted to talk to them," Audrey said smoothly. "Thank you so much for your help, Mrs Tanner. If we have any more questions, we'll be in touch." Mrs Tanner nodded, still looking concerned, and she watched as the two detectives raced back across the yards into the old blue truck.

"Well that's suspicious," Nathan remarked blandly as he turned the truck on and backed them out into the road.

"You mean that they suddenly had no more financial trouble and abruptly left the country on the same day that their insurance agent died?" Audrey said acerbically. "Yeah, that's just a little bit more than suspicious."

"You think they could have done it then? Take out the insurance agent who denied their daughter's insurance help to save her, I mean?" Nathan asked, glancing sideways at her as he manoeuvred the truck back onto Main Street.

"It definitely sounds like the most convincing motive we've heard so far," Audrey said grimly. "In my experience, most people will go to crazy measures for their kids. And the fact that they fled the country the same day really doesn't help their case much. Problem is that we'll need rock-solid proof before we can have them dragged back state-side."

Nathan snorted. "Too bad we're short on _any_ proof, density aside."

"Then let's find some," Audrey said pointedly and smiled. It seemed that the thrill of the case had driven all of her annoyance over their cold and wet conditions from her mind. Although, judging by the way she'd done up the zipper and rolled the sleeves to accommodate her hands, he seriously doubted he'd be getting his coat back anytime soon.  _If I get sick, she's bringing me soup…_

Ten minutes later, they were back inside their office, Audrey running searches on their suspect list while Nathan wrote up the incident report for the argument at the Bucket. They had only been at it for a few minutes when the Chief ambled in, hefting a black briefcase and clearing his throat loudly.

Nathan glanced up for a split second and smirked. "The briefcase is a nice touch," he said dryly. "Makes you look professional."

The Chief shot him a withering look and laid the case on Audrey's desk. "Belonged to your vic, Halter," he said, ignoring the son who was now pointedly ignoring him. "Someone found it outside a building about a block up from where he got hit, looked like it got dropped. Just got out of forensics, they didn't find much. Thought you might want to see if you can make anything of it."

"Thanks, Chief," Audrey said, and the older man gave her a short nod and left. The moment he was gone, Nathan looked up from his report curiously. "Let's see what our guy was carrying, shall we?"

As Audrey flipped the latches, Nathan came around to stand behind her. When she lifted the lid, they both just stared at the contents. Stacks of forms and paperwork were held together with paperclips. There were a few loose pens with chewed caps, and a carelessly torn bag had littered lozenges across everything else. There was a small plastic sack containing a now soggy-looking sandwich. And that was basically it.

"That was anticlimactic," Nathan drawled, flipping half-heartedly through a set of blank paper forms.

"Wait, here's his wallet," Audrey said, picking up the folded scrap of leather that had been hidden beneath the papers. She opened it and grimaced. "Wow, this wallet's in sad shape." The leather was soft and worn thin in several places, and a few of the card slots were torn. There were seven wrinkled dollars, a Maine driver's license with a very unflattering picture, and a credit card with the numbers worn completely off. The only other contents were a half dozen business cards reading 'Jeffrey Michael Halter' and a faded photograph of a clearly much younger Delilah the dog.

"Awh, look at the puppy," Audrey cooed and her partner matched her teasing smirk with a grin of his own.

"So we can be sure that if he had anything worth stealing, it's already been taken," Nathan continued critically. "What are the odds that it's a coincidence our guy's briefcase was found a block from where he died?"

"Even outside of Haven, those are slim chances," Audrey replied to the rhetorical question. "So what, someone tries to rob him on his way to work?"

"And a block later he just so happens to stumble in front of a car," Nathan finished sceptically.

"Maybe he was pushed, and when the robber realized he didn't have anything, he ditched the evidence," Audrey suggested. "Or maybe, for some reason, Halter ditched it himself. To deliver something to someone, or as a clue."

Nathan groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Wouldn't it be nice to get a case that makes sense?"

Audrey snorted. "Nathan, hate to break it to you, but you're in the wrong line of work."


	6. Accidental Death by Homicide

Nathan looked up from his desk as he heard approaching footsteps, fully prepared to comment on the fact that Audrey was the late one that morning. Then he actually saw her. "What the hell happened to you?" he asked.

"Thanks," Audrey grumbled. Her ponytail was dishevelled, her eyes were heavily shadowed, and the tip of her nose looked red. She slumped down into her chair, nursing a steaming cup. "I caught a cold, thanks to that stupid storm yesterday."

"You know the department offers sick leave," Nathan said with a raised eyebrow. He'd wondered if he might be coming down with his own cold. He couldn't feel any of it, but he'd definitely noticed that his sense of smell seemed dulled when he'd woken up.

"I'll be fine," Audrey said. "What's our agenda?"

"So far, we're okay," Nathan said, still looking at her uncertainly. "Nothing new has come in yet."

"Good, so just more digging on the Halter case," Audrey said. She looked like she was going to say more but abruptly turned and coughed into the crook of her elbow. When she'd stopped, she took a deep swallow of her tea before speaking. "We should do some research, on Halter and those four clients. See if we can find any similar deaths linked to them."

"You think that Halter was part of a targeted group?" Nathan asked curiously.

"Or that he could have done this to himself on accident," Audrey supplied. "It wouldn't be the first time we've seen a Troubled person's affliction come back on them."

Nathan surveyed her thoughtfully. "Where do you come up with all of these ideas?" he asked, torn between awe and amusement. It never ceased to surprise him just how easily his partner could tap into the mystery of the Troubles and make sense of it all.

Audrey grimaced at her tea. "I couldn't sleep last night. I had a lot of time to think." She dissolved into coughing again, making Nathan frown sympathetically.

"Parker, you sure you don't wanna take the day off?" he ventured, already knowing the answer.

"It's just a cold," she replied dismissively, and just a hint defensively. "I'll be fine."

Nathan nodded, stretching out his legs beneath the desk. "Alright then. I'll check the old case files, you check the newspaper archives?" After making a noise of consent, Audrey turned her focus to her computer, leaving Nathan to wander into the file room and pick up two boxes. Back at his desk, he began the arduous task of scouring the stacks of files for anything that could possibly relate.

The office was quiet except for the tapping of keys, the rustling of paper, and Audrey's sporadic coughing fits. So they both jumped in surprise when the radio flared into life. "Sugar, you there?"

Ignoring Audrey's quiet laughter, Nathan grabbed the radio. "Go ahead, Laverne."

"We got an incident down on Cleary, number thirty-four," the radio said. "Some guy found his friend dead."

"Copy that," Nathan said and stood up with a sigh, clipping his radio on his belt. "Because one corpse a week isn't enough around here."

"Why'd she use the radio?" Audrey asked in amusement. "She's like two rooms away."

Nathan shrugged. "I don't know. I'm starting to think she is surgically attached to her desk. Not sure if I've ever seen her leave the office."

They exchanged brief smiles and then headed out of the office, being certain to call hellos to the elderly dispatcher as they passed her room. In the truck, Audrey leant against the window, sniffling, as Nathan steered them in the direction of Cleary Street. He was watching her apprehensively, wondering if there was any way to convince her that she should go home and rest that wouldn't result in her pulling her gun on him. Probably not.

Thirty-four Cleary Street was a standard little duplex. The side-by-side houses were identical, with tan walls and white windows and bright red front doors, except that the drive of one side was filled with patrol cars and an ambulance. There was yellow tape stretched across the open doorway, and curious neighbours were wandering around the ring of cars.

Audrey blazed a path through the yard, and Nathan followed a few steps behind. They slipped beneath the tape line, and both of them stopped short when they saw the crime scene. A young woman was lying in a heap of limbs at the bottom of the staircase, a pool of dark blood around the body.

"What've we got here, Joe?" Nathan asked the EMT crouched next to the body.

"Her name's Angelina Waters, thirty-one," the older man said calmly, his voice loaded with a thick New English accent. "Broken neck and cracked skull. Looks like she took a nasty tumble down these stairs."

"Fell or pushed?" Audrey asked.

Joe looked up at them and gave a pale smile. "That's your job, isn't it?" When neither of them responded, he nodded in the direction of the living room doorway. "The guy that found her is in there with Officer Seddal. He says he just found her like this. The rest of it's all up to you guys."

"Thanks, Jake," Audrey said, kneeling down beside the body as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Nathan and Joe exchanged short glances, but the EMT just shrugged, shook his head, and walked off with an amused expression. Smirking a little himself, Nathan crouched down beside his partner.

"See anything peculiar?" he asked while his eyes panned for any signs of foul play. There were no visible signs of bruising to suggest she'd been forced, no marks on her hands to suggest a struggle.

"Nothing really," Audrey said, gingerly touching the girl's head. "It looks pretty standard. I just –" She drew her hand back, squinting at the blood on her fingertips.

"What is it, Parker?" he asked, watching her roll her thumb and forefinger together with a frown.

Audrey looked up at him grimly. "That blood from inside her head, it feels – gritty."

"Gritty," Nathan echoed and then comprehension set in. "Like sand?"

"Hey, Jake," Audrey said to the EMT as he passed by again. "Let's have this body sent down to the morgue for an autopsy, would you?"

"Will do, Agent Parker," Joe said, gesturing to an EMT outside the door to come help him.

"Thanks,  _Joe_ ," Nathan said pointedly and grinned at the frustrated look that flashed across Audrey's face. "So there might be a connection between this girl and Halter. But how? Hit by a car, fall down the stairs. It doesn't make any sense; these deaths don't have anything in common."

"Both deaths made to look like accidents," Audrey said in that slow, thoughtful voice she used when putting the pieces together in the way only she could. Although it sounded admittedly more nasal today than usual thanks to her cold.

Nathan nodded. "That's possible, I suppose," he agreed. "But what's the connection? There has to be some link between them. People don't just kill random people for no reason."

"Let's ask her friend then," Audrey said and stood up. "See if he knows anything." She peeled off her gloves, and they walked through the doorway into the next room. Officer Seddal was standing in the open area in the middle of the living room, and next to him was a man in his late-twenties who looked thoroughly distraught. He was pale, shaking, and looked on the verge of being sick. Nathan and Audrey hovered inside the door until Seddal approached them.

"Guy's Will Moore," Officer Seddal reported to them. "Friend and co-worker of the vic. Says when she didn't come into work he came over on his lunch to check on her. Found her like this and called up. I'm not getting a whole lot more from him than that."

"Alright, Alan –"

"Bob," Nathan corrected with a smirk.

"We'll take it from here," Audrey finished, ignoring her partner's humour. Seddal nodded and walked out of the room. "Damn it, I'm even worse with these names when I'm sick," she muttered and shook her head. Then she approached the man and said, "Will, right?"

"Yeah," he answered in a hollow sort of voice. "Do you think Angie was murdered?"

"We don't know yet," Audrey said diplomatically. "Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?"

"Nah, she was real sweet to everyone," Will said earnestly. "People thought maybe it was just for the job, but she was just like that all the time. She was just – an angel."

"And you worked together?" Nathan clarified. "Where was that?"

"Up at the hospital, the Haven Regional," Will explained. "We're both nurses up there."

"And how long had you been sleeping together?" Audrey asked abruptly.

"We – what?" Will sputtered. "Angie and I, we weren't – just –" He met Audrey's pointed stare, and his shoulders slumped in defeat. "A couple months. But it's not what you're thinking, there's no crazy jealous lover thing. I loved her, we were in love. We were just quiet about it because they don't really approve of workplace romance. We've both been trying to find somewhere else to work so we could be together. And I didn't kill her. I wouldn't, ever. I love her."

"Okay, okay," Audrey said, trying to calm him. "We understand. So you came over when she didn't show for work today, right?"

"Yeah, I got worried about her. She's never missed work without calling in before," he said, wringing his hands. "I figured she was just really sick, she wasn't feeling so good yesterday. She was kinda distracted, I guess, like she couldn't focus. And she kept rubbing her ears, said they'd been bothering her. It looked like maybe she was getting a sinus infection or something to me. I thought maybe she'd just taken too much cold medicine and was sleeping it off or something, but then I found her and –" His voice broke off and he shuddered, looking ill again.

Audrey nodded. "Alright, just one more question for now. Did Ms Waters know Jeffrey Halter?"

"Halter," Will echoed in confusion, apparently thinking hard. "I know that name. He's the insurance guy, right? I've only seen him a couple times, but you hear about him a lot up at the hospital. He does the insurance for most everyone in Haven. I guess Angie would've known him or at least known about him. Why? You think he did this?"

"No, we don't," Audrey said with the smallest curl in her lips. "Thanks for your time, Mr Moore. We'll get back to you if we have any more questions." The man nodded weakly, and Nathan followed Audrey back into the hall again. The moment they were out of earshot of the living room, she spun on him. "Was it just me or did that sound oddly familiar?"

"Alright, so whoever got to Halter got to this girl too," Nathan concluded. "So there's some connection between them. These things never just get random people, there's always a plan. Except we have no idea who or how or why any of this happened."

"We have to figure out what the link is," Audrey said determinedly. "If we know what it is the two of them had in common, then we'll have a better idea of who could've done it."

"So we'll start with the house," Nathan finished. At least in the middle of all this madness, they still had a routine. "See if we can find anything here to link her to Halter."

"We should start upstairs, that where the bedroom and bathroom are," Audrey said. "It's also the last place she was before this happened. We'll be more likely to find something useful up there." They moved to the stairs, where the EMTs had already lifted off the dead girl's body and were setting about cleaning up the rest of the scene. The stairs were narrow, and halfway up Nathan had to bow his head to get under the low hanging ceiling.

The top floor of the duplex was set up like a studio apartment, with just the one wide open room that doubled as both a bedroom and a study. There was a doorway on the far end that connected to a tiny bathroom. Unlike Halter's house, this room looked like a tornado has recently torn through it. The blankets were a tangled heap beside the bed, and everything that had once been on the desk was now scattered across the floor.

"Wow, not exactly a neat freak, was she?" Audrey asked, nudging aside a stack of upended books with her toe.

"This place looks like it was ransacked," Nathan agreed, lifting up the blankets and looking through them, checking to see if anything was wrapped in them. Nothing was. "Maybe someone was looking for something. Think maybe something was stolen? Like something might have been taken from Halter's briefcase?"

"It looks possible," she said, sifting curiously through the things that lay around the tipped-over desk chair. "So then what, they kill the robbery vics so they can't report them?"

"Or because they tried to stop it," Nathan offered. "Maybe loading them with sand was a defensive thing. When the other person fought back, the Troubled robber got stressed, and this is what happened."

"And then the accidental deaths are just to cover," Audrey finished. She paused to cough roughly into her arm, before continuing, "It could work, but then where are the mistakes? A panicked person covering their tracks wouldn't be thinking clearly. They'd leave traces or make something too obvious. These all look just like they're supposed to. If these were planned, it was done by someone calm and collected. It just doesn't make sense."

"Never does," Nathan chipped in with an amused smirk.

They lapsed into quiet again as they went back to scouring the room, only speaking up when they might have found something useful, or on the one occasion when Audrey caught her finger on a corner and let out a gasped curse that was followed by another bout of coughing. Nathan was just about to comment on the obvious pointlessness of their search when he looked up and realised Audrey wasn't in the room.

"Parker?" he called out and then heard her footsteps in the adjoined bathroom. He walked over to the doorway just in time to see her turn around, an orange bottle clutched in her hand.

"Nathan, I think I found our connection," she said and held the bottle to him. Taking it curiously, he twisted the prescription bottle to read the label.  _Amoxicillin_.

"The ear infection medicine," he remembered from Halter's file.

"Keep reading," she said with a tense nod. Nathan's eyes went back to the label, and he felt a bit of dread when he realised what she meant.

_Prescribed by Dr Kelly Marlow._


	7. The Not-So-Good Doctor

"I just can't believe Kelly would be involved in something like this," Nathan muttered for what must have been the seventh time. Audrey rolled her eyes but didn't bother answering. It wasn't like he'd listened to her the last few times she'd said anything. She just let Nathan sulk in his disbelief as he drove the truck toward the hospital. This was one of those times that Audrey was grateful that she was the outsider in town because she didn't have to deal with the problem of knowing all of their victims and suspects the way that Nathan did.

Nathan still looked tense when he parked the truck in the lot outside the hospital building. They both climbed out onto the asphalt, Audrey clutching a fistful of tissues since her nose had started dripping during the afternoon and it was driving her mad, and began the walk toward the hospital doors. The kindly old lady behind the front counter gave them directions up to Dr Marlow's office, and they climbed into the elevator.

"So how do you know this doctor anyway?" Audrey asked curiously as they rode up in the silent lift.

"He used to be a paediatrician," Nathan confessed. "He was my doctor when I was a kid. He's the one who helped me out the first time this whole no feeling thing started up. I spent a lot of time in his clinic when I was little. He changed specialities when I was a teenager, so I didn't see him when this all came back. I haven't actually seen him in a while."

Audrey nodded, storing away that information for another time. She was using all of these little bits of information she was getting to piece together her partner's past, and each time she learned something new like this she would work it into the vague outline she already had. Despite it all, she felt quite certain there were things about Nathan Wuornos that would always remain a mystery.

Not that she had a whole lot of room to talk, logically. She probably knew as much about his past as she did hers at the moment.

The lift pinged and the doors glided open, and the detectives walked out into a long white corridor. There was a large waiting room around the reception area, and doors lined the tiled halls. Nathan did a quick glance at the directional signs on the wall and then set off down the left side hallway, checking door numbers as they passed.

"Here it is," he murmured, stopping short in front of one of the identical doors set in the wall. The plaque next to the doorframe read ' _Dr Kelly Marlow – Otolaryngologist.'_

"Wow, that's a mouthful of a title," Audrey remarked with a smirk. Nathan's lips quirked just slightly before he knocked on the door.

"Come on in, it's unlocked," was shouted back through the door. The pair exchanged short glances before Nathan twisted the doorknob and they stepped inside.

Dr Kelly Marlow was sitting in an office chair in front of a computer desk, and he quickly swivelled to face the doorway. He was an elderly man, with closely cropped grey hair and a lifetime of wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, but something about him still gave the impression of great energy. He swept off his reading glasses and stood when they entered.

"Well my word, little Nathan Wuornos," he greeted with a smile. "My God you've grown, haven't you? I haven't seen you in ages."

"Hey, Kelly," Nathan said. "This is my partner, Agent Parker."

"Ah yes, I've heard about you around the town," Dr Marlow said. "Vince was right, you look just like Lucy." Audrey felt her heart stutter in her chest and she tried not to gape at the doctor.

"You knew Lucy?" she asked uncertainly.

"Everyone who lived here did," Dr Marlow answered with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Now what brings you two down here today? I'm going to assume it's not for my medical expertise, although I must say, Agent Parker, you look like you've come down with a bit of a head cold."

"We're actually here about this," Nathan said, drawing the evidence bag that contained Angelina Waters' pill bottle from his pocket. "You ordered this prescription, right?"

Dr Marlow took the bag and examined the label. "Oh yes, for Nurse Waters," he said with a nod of recollection. "She works here at the hospital and came to see me on her way home from work yesterday. Had developed a pretty nasty ear infection, so I prescribed some of this to clear it out. Why?"

"You also prescribed this same drug to Jeffrey Halter, didn't you?" Audrey asked, ignoring his question.

"Halter… The insurance agent?" Dr Marlow asked in surprise. "Why yes, I did. A few days ago. His ears were giving him trouble, too. Said that they itched, deep inside, and then that his ears kept ringing. The poor man let it go so long the sinus pressure build-up actually affected his hearing. We had to hold our entire appointment through writing because he couldn't hear a word I was saying to him."

"And Ms Waters, were her symptoms the same?" Audrey pressed.

"Well yes, just about," Dr Marlow agreed. "Ear infections usually have the same symptoms in everyone. The pain inside the ears, the ringing, the inflammation of the inner ear, a bit of pain in the sinuses, and, if ignored for long enough, temporary deafness. They both showed all the same classic symptoms." His eyes narrowed slightly, and he repeated, "Why do you ask?"

Nathan shifted his weight and said, "Because both of them are dead."

Dr Marlow's eyes widened, and the evidence bag slipped from his hand, landing on the floor with a muffled clack. He shook his head, looking horrified, and then finally sagged into his chair. "Why that's terrible," he said grimly. "Those poor people. I mean, no one much understood Mr Halter, but he was a good man at heart. And Nurse Waters, why she was the best nurse in this place. She was always so sweet, but fair. Always fair and honest. The patients all loved and respected her for that." He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then looked up at them sadly. "How did it happen?"

"Halter was hit by a car," Nathan explained, and Audrey could tell that his tough cop behaviour was starting to wear thin as he stared at his old doctor. "And Waters fell down her stairs."

"Oh God," Dr Marlow murmured, rubbing at his forehead. "So why have you come to me about this? You – surely you don't think I did something to them?"

"Both of these victims came to you right before they died," Audrey said, picking up the slack since Nathan had locked his jaw. "Both of them were prescribed the exact same medicine, by you. And then they died. You have to see why that makes us a little suspicious."

"I didn't do anything to either of them," Dr Marlow said firmly. "They were sick, I gave them medicine. That's the end of it."

"You didn't administer any other sort of medicine here, did you? Maybe a special booster shot or something?" Audrey prodded.

"Absolutely not," the doctor said. He stood up again, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. "I would never do anything that would harm a patient. I am a doctor, I help people. Hurting them would go against everything that I stand for. Nathan, you know this."

"I know, Kelly," Nathan said, shrugging and then burying his hands in his pockets. "But it's our job, we have to ask. To be sure."

"Well it's a waste of your time and energy accusing me of poisoning my patients," Dr Marlow said gruffly. "I've told you, I didn't do anything but my job."

"Alright," Audrey said, backing off that line of questioning, if only because she could tell it was making Nathan uncomfortable. "Well did you notice anything else peculiar about either of them when you saw them? Anything that seemed out of the ordinary, maybe?"

"Besides the sudden onset of their infections, no," Dr Marlow said, his posture relaxing slightly as the topic changed. "Both of them complained of symptoms that generally would've taken weeks to appear, although both said they had only been experiencing them for a day or in Halter's case, two. And there was a bit of wax build-up in their ear canals as well. Fairly normal in this sort of thing, the pressure moves it all up there, but there did seem to be an excessive amount of it, and it seemed almost –  _dry_ , I suppose would be the word. Small, crystallised."

"Like sand," Nathan said, and the doctor nodded.

"Yes, rather like it, I think," he agreed. "I only hope it's not some new epidemic that will be spreading around. We already seem to have so many of those nowadays."

"Did either of them mention someone to you? Someone that they might have had an argument with or someone that might have had it out for them?" Audrey asked hopefully.

"No, no one says much to me except about their illnesses," Dr Marlow said simply. "I'm not a therapist, after all. Although Nurse Waters was rather agitated when she was in here. The poor girl had just finished doing a rotation through several different wards, and those are always so stressful, dealing with so many unfamiliar patients and unfamiliar diseases. I think she spent most of yesterday up in the cancer ward. Seeing all of those people, most of them headed for an early grave, why that's enough to make anyone feel awful."

Audrey glanced up interestedly, something in that statement sticking out to her. "Alright, well I think that's all we have for now," she said, looking over at her partner. "Nathan, any other questions?"

"Nope, I think that's it," he said, sensing that she'd caught on to something that he'd missed. He stooped to grab the evidence bag, tucking it into his pocket. "I guess we'll be heading out then. Thanks for your time, Kelly."

They turned for the door, but the doctor stopped them. "Nathan," he said, and both looked back at him. "Your condition, it came back, didn't it?"

"Yes, a couple years ago," he said with that hardened, closed off look that Audrey recognised so well.

"I'm sorry to hear that, m'boy," Dr Marlow said, shaking his head sadly. "They found any cures, anything that might make it go away again?"

For some reason, Nathan shot a guarded look at his partner before turning back to the doctor. "No, nothing yet," he said flatly.

"Well I hope they do," the doctor said and sank into his desk chair. "You're a good man, and you don't deserve that weight God put on your shoulders."

Nathan looked awkward, and finally, he simply settled for a short nod and then walked out of the office. Audrey made to follow when the doctor said, "Oh and Agent Parker, some over-the-counter decongestants and some of Annabeth's herbal tea, and you'll be over that cold in three days tops."

"Thanks," Audrey said uncertainly and then stepped into the hall, shutting the door behind her. Nathan was waiting for her, and they walked back out of the hospital without speaking, not wanting to talk while surrounded by so many people as there always seemed to be in the hospital corridors. The silence held until they were safely shut up inside the old Bronco again.

"Nathan, you alright?" Audrey asked cautiously, twisting sideways in the passenger seat to face her partner.

Nathan looked over at her for a second, his brooding eyes thoughtful, and then he nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said and even managed a small smirk. "So what was your epiphany?"

Audrey's smile faded into an anxious frown. "Dr Marlow said that right before she got sick, Nurse Waters had been on rotation in the cancer ward," she said, and Nathan nodded slowly. "Well, who have we talked to already who would have been up in the cancer ward?"

Nathan's eyebrows furrowed, and then lifted with comprehension. "Marion Yardley."

"Maybe Nurse Waters was just trying to be honest with her, tell her the chances of her husband's recovery, and Marion didn't like it," Audrey speculated. "Or maybe she went about a treatment wrong. There are a million things a nurse in unfamiliar territory could do to upset an already upset woman." She paused to dab at her nose with the wrinkled tissue in her hand, making an annoyed face. "We should go question her again. Maybe even her husband this time, he might know something."

"Tomorrow," Nathan said, switching on the truck's ignition. "Right now we've got other things to do."

"Like what?" Audrey asked, wondering what on earth was more important than solving a murder case, especially one involving what she was positive had to be a Troubled person.  _And if he says pancakes, I swear I'm going to kill him._

"We have a few stops to make, and then we're clocking out early," he informed her as he shifted the truck into reverse and pulled out of the parking stall. "First stop is the pharmacy to pick up some decongestants, so you stop sniffling." He smirked a little at the indignant look she shot him at that comment. "And then we're going to Annabeth's for tea. I think I'll have some too, just in case. I must have caught your cold because I can't smell a thing."

"That's the only way you can tell you have a cold?" she asked in awe. Of course, with his inability to feel, he wouldn't feel the pressure inside his skull or the itching in his throat or the aching in his chest. All of the most horrible parts of a cold would go completely unnoticed by him. Although she would never admit it out loud for fear of offending him, at that moment, as Audrey huddled inside his coat and tried to not think about the growing tickle in her throat, she was kind of jealous of Nathan and his condition.

As if he could tell what she was thinking, his lips lifted in a lopsided grin. "I have to admit, this condition has a few benefits," he said wryly. "For instance, I don't even remember what a hangover is supposed to feel like."

Audrey didn't even bother trying to hide her envy at that. She was still grousing about it when he dropped her off at the Bed and Breakfast with a box of decongestants in her pocket and a large to-go mug of her third helping of Annabeth's herbal tea. She'd never been much of a tea drinker, but Audrey had to admit, if only to herself, that the tea tasted fantastic and already her sinuses felt clearer. His last words were explicit directions to be lazy and get a lot of sleep, or he'd send her straight back home in the morning.

Never one to like being told what to do, or being coddled for something as silly as a cold, Audrey had shot him an irritated look as she'd climbed out of his truck. But once she was curled up on her couch in her pyjamas, she had to say, it felt rather nice to be taken care of for once in her life.


	8. Dead Ends

Audrey woke at the crack of dawn, feeling well rested and refreshed after her gloriously relaxing night. Her nose was still a bit stuffy, and she still had a cough, but the pressure inside of her skull seemed to have abated for the time being. After she had gotten ready for the day, she waited on the front porch of the Bed and Breakfast for Nathan to show up. Even though she had her own car, a cheap rental car she'd gotten after making the decision to stay in Haven for a while, he had picked her up for work at least every other morning. She bounced on the balls of her feet in the chilly autumn air in an attempt to keep warm, checking her watch every few minutes.

At twenty past she started getting uneasy. Nathan was never late to pick her up.

Making her decision, Audrey stepped back into her room and grabbed her keys, and then climbed into her car. She gave a grateful sigh when it actually started for once and instantly began the drive up to Nathan's place. The first thing she noticed when she pulled into the drive was that his truck was still there, parked at a lazy angle on the concrete with dew still sparkling undisturbed on the glass. Warning bells went off in Audrey's head, and she all but jogged onto the porch of the little cabin.

"Nathan?" she shouted as she knocked on the door. She waited impatiently, but there was no noise of response from inside. Brow furrowing anxiously, she knocked again harder. "Nathan, are you in there?" Still nothing.

Starting to fear the worst, Audrey twisted the doorknob, but it was locked. She had to jump to reach the key hidden on top of the high doorframe, but once she had it, she hastily opened the door and stepped inside. Nothing looked out of place in the living room, but it was still unnervingly quiet in the house. "Nathan?" she called, her heart pounding in her chest.

She searched the house slowly and carefully, looking for anything that seemed off but everything looked the way it should. Finally, she reached the bedroom and pushed the door open. She stopped short when she saw Nathan, his body spread haphazardly across the mattress and not moving. "Nathan!" Three steps closer she realised he  _was_ moving. He was breathing.

He was asleep.

Almost laughing at herself, Audrey relaxed the hand that had instinctively gone to her sidearm. Nathan was wearing only a pair of faded flannel pants, his bare back rising and falling steadily with his breathing. His face was buried in a pillow, and a flat sheet was tangled around his waist. He was sprawled at an awkward angle on the bed, one of his arms draped off the edge of the bed and one long leg dangerously close to joining it. His other leg was trapped beneath the head of Delilah the dog, who seemed to be taking up most of the blankets from her position in the centre of the bed.

This time Audrey really did laugh. Delilah lifted her head slightly, and then let out a lazy breath and rested her head on Nathan's thigh again. Rolling her eyes, Audrey said, "Alright Nathan, out of bed." He didn't even stir. Audrey felt uneasy again as she moved closer to the bed and raised her voice. "Nathan, get up." Still no response. Why wasn't he answering her?

Walking around to stand directly beside the bed, Audrey practically shouted, "Nathan," and for her own benefit, she shoved his shoulder roughly.

Nathan twitched and pushed himself up on his elbows, blinking around bemusedly. "Hmm, what, who's there?" he mumbled sleepily. He squinted up at her and then frowned. "Parker? Why are you in my bedroom?"

"Because somebody decided their beauty sleep was more important than work," she answered with a smirk. "I've been yelling at you for like five minutes. You sleep like the dead. Did you drink last night or something?"

"What? No. Just that tea. It wiped me out. I just came home and crashed." He sat up, removing his leg from beneath Delilah's head so he could swing them over the edge of the bed. "I overslept?"

Audrey glanced at the clock on the night table and nodded. "We're supposed to be at the station in ten minutes," she said. Nathan followed her gaze and let out a quiet curse.

"I don't know how I slept so late, normally I'm a really light sleeper," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Sorry, I'll just get ready." Suddenly he glanced down and seemed to realise his attire, and he tried to subtly cross his arms over his bare chest. "You could just wait in the living room while I get ready."

"Yeah, I'll be out there," she agreed, trying not to stare. She hadn't even been paying attention until he'd drawn her eyes to his bared torso, and now she was finding it a bit difficult to look away. This was Nathan, her partner and best friend, and she shouldn't think these sorts of things but –  _damn_.

Turning tail before she could open her mouth and insert her foot, Audrey made a hasty retreat to the living room. She didn't relax until she heard his bathroom door close and the shower running. Trying to distract herself, she made her way into the kitchen and busied herself with the coffee percolator on the stove. Anything to keep her mind out of the gutter and in reality. In the reality where she wasn't going to jeopardise the one stable relationship in her life.

She was just starting on her first cup of coffee when Nathan wandered into the kitchen, fully dressed and hair still damp against his forehead. "Made yourself at home, I see," he remarked with the slightest curl of a smile. In response, she just nodded toward the cup she'd poured for him, and he picked it up eagerly.

"It'll be cool by now," she informed him, and he nodded gratefully before taking a sip.

"You're feeling better, I take it?" he asked, leaning against the counter as he drank his coffee.

"Much," she agreed. "That tea is a miracle cure."

Nathan breathed deeply through his nose and frowned. "I must need more of it then because I still can't smell a thing," he said and shook his head. "You know the worst thing about having no sense of smell?"

"The fact that you accidentally overcompensate on cologne?" Audrey offered with a smile.

"Did I?" Nathan asked, his brow knitting. Audrey shook her head, and he relaxed. "No, it's how it screws with your sense of taste, too. This coffee tastes so bland even though I know you always make it strong." He took another swallow and wrinkled his nose. "Alright, so where are we on the Sandman case?"

They finished their coffees over discussion about their case and were still talking about it when they arrived at Haven Regional. This time the woman at the front desk gave them directions to the cancer ward, and up on the third floor, another receptionist pointed them toward Thomas Yardley's bed. It was just one of the many that lined a wide, open corridor, not granted any more privacy than what was supplied by the flimsy curtains that separated the beds. He was sitting up in bed, reading from a worn book, and only glanced up when they stopped at the foot of his bed.

"Thomas Yardley?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," he answered uncertainly, his eyes lingering on the badge clipped to Nathan's belt. "Can I help you?"

"Did you know a nurse by the name of Angelina Waters?" Audrey asked as Nathan took up his typical, protective stance just behind her.

"Angie? Yeah, she was the nurse up here just a few days ago, day before last I think," Thomas said. "Really sweet gal. She would come by every hour or so just to chat, to help fight off the boredom."

Audrey nodded thoughtfully. "So you liked her then?"

"Of course I did," he said, brow furrowing in confusion. "She was nice, really cared, you know? And she was the first to be frank with me about all of this medical stuff. She didn't sugarcoat it, just told me the truths right out. It's a nice change to be given the facts for once."

"How did your wife feel about that?" Audrey asked.

Thomas Yardley's eyebrows shot up at that. "What does Marion have to do with this? What's going on? Is she hurt?"

"No, Angelina Waters is," Nathan said flatly. "Did you notice anything peculiar about her yesterday? Did she maybe mention someone she had a conflict with?"

"What? No," Thomas said, his forehead beetling in concern. "She was fine. Other than she was complaining of an ear infection. And she was tired. She'd been doing rotations through different wards and medical centres for the last two weeks. She said she was trying to find a new place to work, something about a man she was in love with and not having a workplace romance. I'd be tired too if I was trying to figure out a new place every day of the week." He frowned. "What happened to her? Is she going to be alright?"

"What about Jeffrey Halter?" Audrey asked, ignoring his question.

"Oh right, Marion told me about what happened to him," Thomas said. "I wasn't fond of him personally, he wasn't much of a people person, but it's a shame about what happened. We'll never understand why God takes people before their time like that."

"Or why God gives good, healthy men cancer?" Audrey asked with a raised eyebrow.

Thomas' expression was sombre as he nodded. "He tests us all in different ways," he answered wearily. "I am sure that the both of you have faced tests of your own." Nathan and Audrey shot short glances at the other, thinking of the hardships faced between the both of them. Convoluted pasts and rare medical diseases, all beneath the heavy weight of trying to control the madness that was the city of Haven, Maine.

"Well clearly he has nothing to say that will help us," Nathan said, rolling his shoulders and giving Audrey a pointed look. "We should go."

"We'll be in touch," Audrey said and then turned to follow Nathan back out of the hospital. When they reached the elevator, Audrey looked up at him curiously. "What was that about?"

Nathan lifted an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" he asked in confusion. "He wasn't giving us anything useful. I just figure it would be a better use of our time to question people who might actually be suspects."

"You think we can rule him out then?" Audrey asked. She hadn't sensed much of a murderer in Thomas Yardley either, but she always liked to have Nathan's opinion as well. He was a fairly good judge of character, and he understood the people better than she did, despite his serious lack of social skills.

"Yes, him definitely," Nathan agreed. "I'm still not sure about his wife though. I think our best bet would be to question her again." Audrey nodded in acquiesce, and they left the hospital. "But after lunch. I haven't eaten yet this morning."

Audrey laughed quietly, muttering, "Figures," to herself. She should have known pancakes had something to do with his abrupt departure.

Nathan glanced over at her with a furrowed brow. "You say something?"

"Hmm? No, nothing," Audrey said, feigning innocence. He looked sceptical, but he nodded and turned his attention back to the truck. If she'd managed to escape Nathan's super hearing for once, she was going to relish the moment and not push her luck.

The strange niggling feeling in the base of her stomach that was warning her danger was coming was determinedly ignored. Danger could wait until after lunch.


	9. The Loudest Silence

Nathan frowned as they walked into the diner, the tinny bell clinging over their heads. Normally when he walked in, he was greeted with the familiar smells of the freshly cooked meals, the greasy burgers and the sweet breakfasts and the hot coffee. Today there was nothing. He really hated being sick; the loss of another sense made him feel crippled.

They had barely slid into their usual booth when the waitress, a sweet older woman with streaks of grey in her brown hair who had once been Nathan's babysitter, bustled over, already carrying two cups of coffee with her. "What'll it be for you today?" she asked, aiming the question at Audrey.

"I'll have the grilled ham and cheese," she answered.

The waitress had nodded and half turned away when Nathan added, "I'll have the same." Both Audrey and the waitress stared at him, wide eyes, for a moment. The waitress was the first to recover, nodding again and then wandering back toward the kitchens. Audrey didn't even attempt to hide her blatant staring. After a moment he awkwardly asked, "What?"

"I'm just surprised, that's all," she said, still eyeing him appraisingly. "I'm not sure I've ever seen you order regular food here."

Nathan allowed himself a wry smile. "Well there's no point in wasting perfectly good pancakes on someone who can't taste them," he said with a slight shrug. He didn't want to have to dig into his favourite meal and be reminded of just how hobbled this stupid head cold was making him. No man should be tortured by his pancakes; that was just cruel.

He thought he saw Audrey mumbling something but he didn't catch whatever it was and when he looked up at her again her lips had stopped moving. She shot him a quizzical look as he stared at her thoughtfully, and he quickly shook it off. "Nathan, you sure you're alright?" she asked uncertainly.

"Yeah, fine," he said off-handedly. When her continued stare told him she wouldn't back down without explanation, he finished, "I just really hate being sick."

Audrey nodded, still watching him suspiciously, but she was stopped from questioning him further by the arrival of their lunches. When the waitress had walked away again, Audrey said, "So we're going to question Marion again after lunch?"

"I think she's our best bet right now," Nathan agreed. "She's the only one we know of who has a definite connection to both of the victims. She was not exactly quiet about her hatred for Halter. And maybe she didn't like the fact that the nurse was so open with her husband about his illness. It's the only logical path we have so far." He paused and then added, "Marion always has been a bit quick tempered when she thinks someone's stepping on her toes. I found that out when I tried to tell her I wouldn't like a book she thought I would."

"Did you like it?" Audrey asked curiously, a teasing smile on her lips.

"One of the best books I've ever read," he admitted, echoing her smile. "She didn't forgive me until I gave in and bought it, and then went back to tell her she was right and apologize for arguing with her. I never combated a book offer with her again after that, and she became friendly again."

"Sounds like if she's Troubled then she could get really dangerous," Audrey said so quietly that Nathan almost had to read the words off her lips.

With that ominous statement they drifted into quiet, turning their attentions to their sandwiches. Nathan took a bite of his and wrinkled his nose in disappointment. He had been hoping the strong flavour of the greasy cooked cheddar and seasonings in the bread would be bold enough to break through his cold, but there was still nothing. It was like chewing cardboard, but then he reasoned cardboard would have more flavour than the sandwich resting on his currently useless taste buds. It took all of his will power to not spit out the food in disgust.

"You don't like it?" Audrey asked with a slight lilt of amusement when he'd grimaced after swallowing.

"I wouldn't know, I can't really taste anything," he said with a small frown, setting the half eaten sandwich on the plate again. He made a desperate attempt to wash away the disgust that seemed to be coating his mouth, but the bland coffee he used did nothing but made him feel worse.

"Wow, when you get a cold, you get it hard," Audrey remarked sympathetically.

Nathan smirked a little bit, if only to momentarily displace the frown he couldn't seem to get off his face that morning. "Well you know me, if I'm going to do something I'd prefer to do it right," he said in an attempt at being flippant, before quickly redirecting his focus to his sandwich. He didn't want to dwell on the topic – it occurred to him too late that eating his lunch wasn't going to help get his mind off it – and especially not with the sad look in his partner's eyes as she gazed across the table at him. He hated that look on anyone, but especially coming from Audrey.

He greatly preferred the look she'd given him this morning in his bedroom.

Shaking his head to dislodge that thought, he picked at a strip of burnt crust on his sandwich. It was awkward but oddly encouraging the way that Audrey had stared at him as he sat there half-dressed that morning, even if he knew nothing would come of it. This was Audrey, his partner and his best friend. His only friend, actually. He wasn't going to do anything that might chase her away. He needed her too much to risk it.

Not to mention there was always that little fact that she was the one person who could magically make the nerves in his skin resurrect after so many years of numbness. That was actually what had woken him that morning; not the shouting she'd apparently been doing, but the electricity that had shot through him when her hand had landed against his bare shoulder blade. The sudden, overwhelming sensation of  _feeling_  had jolted him straight from what must have been the deepest sleep he'd had in a very long time.

Still, despite the caution that his heart was sending out, there was that part of his mind that was determinedly male and couldn't help but imagine how miraculous it would feel to have Audrey's skin all over his and to be able to feel every place she touched with those little hands that lit his skin on fire.

So much for shaking those thoughts away. Nathan cleared his throat awkwardly, keeping his eyes downward in case colour had flooded his cheeks at the dangerous track of his thoughts, and focused on making himself eat his lunch. Perhaps it was better to dwell on this than to allow his imagination to wander. Besides, as repulsive as eating the flavourless food was, he logically knew that he needed to eat something.

The silence hung between them, a little awkward and apprehensive on both sides, until they had finished eating and left. In the truck, the quiet was only broken by the radio playing a classic rock station at a nearly inaudible level. There seemed to be a bit of white noise in the signal, a high frequency humming noise that was irritating to Nathan's ears, but he didn't dare turn it off and face the oppressive silence inside the cab so he let it play. He couldn't wait until they got back into the rhythm of working so this unsettling tension would go away again.

The truck had hardly turned onto the road in front of the bookstore when the police scanner clicked into life. "All available units respond, we've got a hostage situation down on Kerst Street, number twelve. Armed and dangerous. All available units respond."

Nathan cursed under his breath, but flipped a U-turn in the middle of the street as Audrey reached forward to flick the switch attached to the light bar in his windscreen. The red and blue lights glowed off the hood of the truck as they sped back down the way they'd come. Both of them were feeling the familiar climb of adrenaline that came before a situation, mentally settling themselves into the rationality and protocol that would help them handle what was waiting for them.

There were already three patrol cars parked around the house when they arrived, the barricade keeping away the nosy neighbourhood folk that had gathered to watch. The few uniformed officers were standing within the circle, their weapons drawn and their expressions tense. There was a unanimous look of relief on their faces when the detectives arrived.

"What's the situation?" Nathan asked the nearest officer when they'd climbed out of the Bronco.

"Man – name's Rick Colden, I think they said - he's got his family holed up in there," the officer answered in clipped tones. "Neighbour heard the commotion and went to see. Saw him holding a gun. Now he's not letting anyone out."

"Has anyone tried to talk with him?" Nathan pressed.

"Eddie did but it didn't do any good," the officer said with a frown. "He mostly just yelled a lot of stuff that made no sense and brandished his gun at him. I don't think we're going to be able to talk this man down. He's completely out of his mind."

Nathan nodded, his mind racing, planning out the best course of action. "Keep things posted out here, don't try anything rash and just try to keep his focus up here without getting anyone shot," he said flatly. "Parker and I will go around the back and take him down. Understood?" The officer nodded and immediately began sidling sideways to relay the instructions to the next officer.

Turning back to Audrey, Nathan drew his sidearm. "You ready?" he asked.

"I'll follow your lead," she said, pulling out her own gun. He headed around through the crowd, being sure to keep cars between himself and the windows of the house. They slipped into the neighbours' yard and made their way to the back, vaulting the low wooden fence separating the lawns. He crept in a crouch to the back door of the house, glancing back to check that Audrey was still behind him before carefully opening the door.

The door opened into a wide kitchen. Nathan could hear choked sobs coming from near the front of the house, as well as an agitated male voice rambling incoherently. Beneath it all was a dull ringing sound, like the noise produced by an electrical device. Perhaps a television was muted but not turned off, or a radio with the volume down. His eyes scoured the area, finding entrances. One short hall led toward the forward room, and at the other end there was a shallow set of stairs that also led in that direction.

Twisting to face Audrey, he pointed at himself and then to the stairs, and then to her and the hallway. She nodded her understanding and began creeping toward the opening, while he cut in the opposite direction toward the staircase. With his back pressed against the cupboard beside the steps, he peered around the edge into the living room.

Four people were sitting huddled together on the sofa, a woman and three children that were obviously terrified. A man was pacing a routine track across the carpet in front of them, gesticulating widely through the muttered monologue with a hand that was holding a silver handgun that looked like it must have been bought for decoration by the etching in the ivory hilt. Nathan glanced to the far end of the room and caught a glimpse of blonde hair and a blue eye around the corner of the hallway arch, and then took a deep breath and stepped into the room with his gun held down in front of him, relaxed but ready to be lifted if necessary.

"Rick," he started cautiously. The man in the middle of the room stopped as if he'd run into a wall and looked up. In an instant panic flared in his eyes and he pointed the gun directly at Nathan's chest. "Hey, I'm not going to hurt you, alright?" Moving slowly and cautiously, Nathan knelt and placed his gun on the floor by his foot, and then straightened up again.

"What do you want?" the man asked in frantic tones. "Get out of my house. We're fine. I just want all of you to go away. Leave us in peace!"

"Alright, I understand," Nathan agreed slowly, taking his time and making sure to pronounce everything deliberately. In his peripheral vision he could see Audrey moving carefully out of the hallway and toward the man from behind. "Let's just talk about this, okay? Maybe your wife could make us some coffee?"

"Why don't I do that, honey?" the woman on the couch chimed in at his brief pointed look, her voice quivering despite her obvious attempts to sound calm and the tears on her cheeks. "And get the kids a snack? It's passed lunch and they haven't eaten yet."

The man seemed to regard her for a moment, his wide eyes suspicious and conflicted, and then he nodded. "Yes, do that," he agreed. "That would be good." The woman stood up and began shepherding her sobbing and shaking kids passed Nathan and into the kitchen. Nathan just prayed that she would have the sense to get them to the back door and out of the house after that.

"So, tell me what's going on, Rick?" Nathan asked conversationally, doing everything he could to appear nonchalant and to not focus on Audrey's achingly slow progress across the room.

"Who are you?" Rick demanded with narrowed eyes, tightening his grip around the gun.

"My name is Nathan," he answered, keeping his hands lifted near his shoulders and his empty palms facing forward. The electric buzzing grew louder for a moment and Nathan fought back the instinct to cover his ears to block the sound, but before he could move it had faded into the background again. "What happened here, Rick?"

"They won't go away," the man growled out, but the muzzle of the gun had sunk a few inches and Nathan knew he was gaining the man's trust. If he could just get him to lower the gun a bit farther, Audrey could disarm him before he'd have the chance to hurt anyone. "They came for us, and they're trying to take my family away from me. It's insanity. It's not fair. All I want is for them to go away and leave us alone. They can't take my family, I won't let them."

"I can help you keep your family safe," Nathan said evenly. "If you just trust me, come with me, I can make sure that your family stays safe. They won't get to you as long as you trust me."

"You can help us?" the man asked and as hope flared in his eyes the gun was lowered to his waist. "How?"

"You just nee-" The end of Nathan's sentence trailed off into a pained gasp. The white static had abruptly turned into a high-pitched ringing that sent needles through his ear drums and made his focus slip. He grimaced, one hand coming up to shield an ear as his eyes squinted against the fuzziness that had filled his brain.

Through his hazy vision he saw a look of rage and distrust on the man's face, and the gun flew up to point at Nathan's chest again. "Who are you talking to?" the man screamed in anger, the hands clutching the gun shaking. "You've got something in your ear! Who are you talking to? You're with them!" Nathan tried to answer but the sound rose another few decibels and he grunted, sinking down to one knee as he pressed the palms of his hands against his ears even though it did nothing to muffle the piercing noise.

As if in slow motion, Nathan saw the man's finger flex and he barely managed to throw his body sideways behind the sofa in time to avoid the bullet that flew toward him, accompanied by a bang that made darkness tease the edges of Nathan's vision. He glanced around the edge of the furniture to see the man pivot on his heel, spot Audrey standing a few feet behind him, and then lift the gun for a second shot. There was another echoing explosion, Audrey stumbled backwards and out of Nathan's range of vision, and then an eerie silence fell over the house.

"Parker!" Nathan shouted, straining his ears for any sound of her but there was nothing. No breathing, no voices, no ringing noise, no gunshots. Just silence. He felt nausea boiling in his chest. God no, not Audrey. He couldn't lose Audrey. Not like this. Not ever. "Audrey, answer me, damn it!" he yelled desperately but the response was the same as before. Even his own voice seemed off in the oppressive quiet that hung in the house.

A flicker of movement in the corner of his vision brought Nathan's focus back to the man with the gun. Pure, unadulterated rage rose in him as he stared up at the man that was mouthing soundlessly as his frantic eyes looked around him. That was the man who had taken Audrey. A feral snarl ripped from his lips as he launched himself forward, catching the man around the waist and slamming them both into the floor. The gun skittered across the carpet until it landed beneath the coffee table, and Nathan immediately pinned the man's arms to the ground, kneeling on his chest to keep him from moving anywhere.

The man was still moving his lips, forming silent words with a horrified expression, but Nathan was beyond caring what the man might think to say. No words in the world were going to bring his partner back and it took all of his will power not to find his gun and place a bullet in the man's forehead in that very moment. He settled for swinging one fist into the man's jaw, feeling a sense of satisfaction at the way his head snapped to the side.

Another set of hands appeared in front of him, assisting his grip on the struggling man's arms, and Nathan froze. He knew those hands, the lines of those knuckles and the shape of those fingers. He could feel the heat of skin when the fingers brushed against his. He glanced up in awe and saw Audrey staring at him, her eyes wide but her brow drawn in concern. She seemed to be yelling at him, if the intensity of the lines around her lips were any indication, but there was no sound leaving her mouth.

Confused and panicked, Nathan looked around the room. The officers from outside had flooded into the room and they were bustling everywhere, knocking into things and shouting at each other. There had to have been an incredible noise filling the room, but none of it was reaching Nathan's ears. He stepped out of the way as an officer moved in to put the man in cuffs, and he staggered against a wall, rubbing his ears with the heels of his hands even though it made no change.

Then Audrey was in front of him, her rose lips moving but her voice absent, and the reality of it all hit him like a sledgehammer in his chest. He reached out and grabbed her shoulders tightly, and she frowned up at him in concern. "Parker, I can't hear you," he said and he distantly noticed that even his own voice sounded wrong to him. Like he wasn't actually hearing it, just thinking that he was. "I can't – I can't hear  _anything_." He paused and her anxious frown deepened questioningly. He swallowed deeply and finally got the admission out. "Parker, I can't hear anything at all. I'm – I'm  _deaf_."


	10. A Second Opinion

Nathan wasn't speaking and, honestly, it was starting to scare her. Not that it was unusual for him to be quiet, he never was much of a talker, at least before his fifth beer, but this was different. He wasn't just being quiet; he was silent. At the moment he was slumped in the passenger seat of his truck, eyes closed and forehead resting against the window. He hadn't said a word since his surprising revelation in the Colden's living room. After that he had slipped into a state of what she could only guess was shock. He hadn't had any reaction as she let an EMT bandage the place on the side of his thigh where the stray bullet had seared his skin, and she had practically had to drag him to his truck.

Of course Audrey would be lying if she said she wasn't shocked too. Everything had been going fine, and then suddenly he was doubling over. She'd had to duck back, rather ungracefully, behind the wall to avoid getting shot at by the crazy man, but the next thing she knew Nathan had ignored her answering shouts and pinned the man to the ground, looking like he was on the verge of pummelling him to death. She hadn't understood why he was ignoring her, not responding to her confused shouts, until he'd looked up at her in fear and awe. Then she'd known something was wrong.

And now he was deaf.

It didn't make sense. He'd been perfectly fine one minute, and the next minute he was stone deaf. There wasn't any loud noise that could have taken his hearing. So how had it happened? People didn't just randomly go deaf.

Although now that she thought about it, maybe it wasn't so random. Nathan had been having trouble hearing things all day, even if neither of them had recognized the symptoms at the time. He had missed about three muttered remarks she'd made to him already that morning. She'd thought maybe he just wasn't dignifying her sarcasm with a response, but maybe he hadn't heard them at all. And this morning, when he had managed to sleep through her shouting at him. That had been strange but she'd brushed it off as a side-effect of the cold, but perhaps that wasn't it at all.

But what had caused it? There was no logical reason for why a man with exceptional hearing would quite suddenly not be able to hear anything. Deep down, she suspected what it was, but she didn't want to believe it. There had to be another reason. That's why the Bronco was being parked outside Haven Regional Hospital for the third time this week. She wanted a second opinion.

"Nathan, we're here," she said, before remembering that he wouldn't hear what she'd said. She glanced over half-hopefully, wanting to believe that maybe his hearing loss had been temporary and had come back, but he hadn't moved. If it wasn't for the tense lines of his jaw, she'd have thought he was asleep. She stared at him thoughtfully, wondering how to get his attention. He wouldn't hear anything she said to him, and he couldn't feel it if she touched him. Leave it to Nathan to make things complicated for her. It must be some sort of cosmic Karma or something.

Grimacing, she climbed out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. She braced herself, in case this didn't work as she planned, and then opened the door Nathan was leaning against. He had slumped halfway forward before he apparently noticed the change in vertigo and he straightened up, looking confused. He undid the seat belt and slid out of the truck when he saw her standing next to him, but when he looked up at the hospital he scowled. "Why are we here?" he asked, his voice oddly flat and without inflections.

Audrey's brain scrambled to come up with a response he would understand. Finally she pointed at him, and then to her own ears, and then behind her to the hospital. Nathan frowned but he still let her take his hand and lead him into the building. She didn't even stop at the front desk, taking them straight to the elevator and up to a familiar floor. At the office door Nathan grunted and tried to pull away, but she just tightened her grip on his wrist and knocked on the door.

"Come in," a voice answered after a moment and Audrey breathed out a sigh of relief. She carefully opened the door and Dr. Kelly Marlow looked up at her in surprise. "Nathan, Agent Parker. Can I help you? No one else has died, have they?"

"No, this isn't about the case," Audrey said, tugging forcefully until Nathan reluctantly entered the office behind her. "It's Nathan. There's something wrong with his ears. We don't know what happened, his hearing just suddenly disappeared. Can you, you know, look and see if you can tell what's wrong?"

Kelly Marlow looked flummoxed for a moment, and then he stood up and nodded. "Yes, certainly," he agreed. On realizing that the detective was several inches taller than him, he directed Nathan into his desk chair and then peered into his ears. "You say he can't hear anything?" he asked over his shoulder as he flashed a light into the right ear of a very annoyed looking Nathan.

"Yes. He was fine one second, and then suddenly he just doubled over and from that point on he couldn't hear a thing, even when I shouted at him," Audrey explained. She hovered in the doorway of the office, her arms folded and her fingers digging into her biceps anxiously. "You don't think it's something from his condition, do you? Like perhaps it's spreading?"

"Impossible," Dr. Marlow said, shaking his head as he moved around to check Nathan's left ear. "Two completely different systems, there's no way the condition could spread between them." He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers loudly just millimetres from Nathan's ear. Nathan didn't even blink. "Was he suffering from any of the other symptoms?"

"Not that he mentioned, but he wouldn't, would he?" Audrey asked. "He wouldn't feel any of the pain in his ears. He thought he might have gotten a cold, like I had, because he couldn't smell anything, but that was the most he told me."

Dr. Marlow sat back, looking deeply thoughtful as he stared at Nathan. A few seconds later, Nathan glanced sideways at him and arched an eyebrow silently, making the doctor smile sadly. "Well it definitely looks like a fairly severe ear infection," the doctor announced to Audrey, and then lifted a clipboard into his lap and began writing. "Serious inflammation all throughout his ear canal."

Audrey felt her heart plummet into her stomach and she couldn't make herself voice the question that was filling her mind. It turned out she didn't need to, because Nathan read what Dr. Marlow had written on the clipboard and he looked up at the doctor with a furrowed brow. "Just like the others?" he asked.

Dr. Marlow visibly swallowed before answering. "Yes, exactly like the others," he confirmed, nodding for Nathan's benefit. Audrey felt her chest seize up and she sagged against the doorframe for support.

Nathan was frowning as he asked the final question. "The sand?"

"Yes, it appears so," Dr. Marlow agreed. "The same sandy build up that the others had." Audrey felt like her brain was being crushed inside a vice, no matter how she tried to hide it, but Nathan looked completely unaffected by the news. Dr. Marlow glanced between the two of them, and then shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, but there's not much more I can tell you. The best I can do right now is to prescribe him some amoxicillin to fight the infection."

Audrey scowled and shook her head. "No offence, but I think maybe not," she said. "Not that I'm accusing you, but considering the other two died with that medicine in their veins…"

"No, I understand," Dr. Marlow said and she could see that he looked visibly shaken, twisting his hands in his lap as he leaned against the desk corner. "I'll do some research; see if I can find anything. Or see if there's anything I noted in the other files that I might have missed."

"Thank you, Dr. Marlow," Audrey said. She gestured to Nathan, who had been glancing between them looking frustrated, and he stood up to follow her out.

"Agent Parker." She froze when the doctor spoke up and stopped to look back at him. "Keep a careful eye on him, would you? We don't need another of these accidental deaths. Especially not Nathan." When Audrey nodded, the doctor smiled at her wearily.

"C'mon Nathan," Audrey said, knowing he wouldn't hear it but not being able to stop herself anyway. He walked behind her as she left the office and all the way back out to the Bronco.

When they had climbed inside, he said, "Parker," and she twisted to look at him to show she was listening. "Where are we going?"

Audrey had opened her mouth to answer before remembering it was pointless, and she began searching through the cab of the truck for something to write with. She was stopped by Nathan's brief, hollow laugh. "Parker, I think I can read lips well enough," he said and she turned back to him.

"I'm taking you home," Audrey said, speaking slowly and being sure to shape the words fully on her lips.

"No." Even though she had been half-expecting that answer, hearing it still made Audrey huff in irritation. "No. We should keep working."

"Nathan," Audrey started in exasperation but this time she was silenced by his stern glare.

"Please, Parker," he said firmly. "I don't need rest, I need normal. Let's just keep working." Audrey still didn't like the idea but she didn't say anything, and Nathan seemed to take her silence as consent. "We should go interrogate Marion Yardley."

This time Audrey let out an almost hysterical laugh. "How? You can't hear," she said.

Nathan smirked sarcastically. "Right, because I had forgotten that," he drawled and she gave him an annoyed look. "You listen, I'll watch. See if I can pick up anything in her body language. You can write up anything interesting she says for me later."

Frowning thoughtfully, Audrey drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. Everything in her was screaming that they should just get somewhere safe, where she could watch over her partner and make sure nothing else happened to him. Yet at the same time, the logical part of her mind told her that Nathan had been targeted by whoever had killed the others, and finding out who that person was might be their only chance of fixing this. Solving the case could be the only way to save Nathan. So she gave a grudging nod.

The drive from the hospital was as hauntingly quiet as the drive there had been, until Audrey reached over and turned up the radio a little just to have some noise besides the rumbling engine. Nathan was slouched in the passenger seat, but at least this time he looked more attentive as he stared out of the windscreen. His forehead was furrowed as he scowled, an expression Audrey had come to recognize as 'deep in thought' and she could only imagine what he was thinking about.

Her own mind was reeling with the new turn of events. It was difficult enough to unravel the Troubles when they were random people around town, when it was strangers that were dying unusual, unexplainable deaths. It had been scary when it was Duke who had aged a half century in a day. But Nathan… She cared about Duke, a lot, but in her mind there was no room for argument: Nathan came in first. And now that it was Nathan's life on the line, she wasn't just scared. She was terrified.

Two people so far had died from whatever this was, and had died within forty-eight hours of it beginning. Within forty-eight hours of the point that Nathan was at. They still had no idea what exactly it was that was killing them, whether it was the actual sand problem or if that was just a side effect. They still had no real idea of who was even doing it. There was really only one thing in this case that Audrey was sure of, and that was that she was going to save her partner.

She pressed down on the truck's accelerator harder, propelling them on ever faster.


	11. Unyielding

Nathan liked being in control. He liked to be the one that was in charge of what he was doing and where he was going. Haven was such an unpredictable place, and he had lived such an unpredictable life, that he clung to what little sense of control that he could manage. He had habits and routines and patterns that he worked to keep to even while the town he lived in spun on an angled axis. He hated feeling helpless and out of control, and he had never felt more so in his life than he did now.

He shifted uneasily in the passenger seat of his truck, missing the familiar motions of steering and shifting gears that would have given him something to focus on. It was bad enough that he had now lost four of the five human senses, but now he couldn't even drive his own truck. Instead he was stuck staring out the windscreen and waiting, consumed in thoughts he'd rather avoid.

It wasn't like he'd never thought about dying before. As a police officer, even a small town one, it was always an assumed risk that came with the job. For an officer in Haven, Maine, it was even logical to consider dying in unusual and sometimes horribly gruesome ways. That was just part of the agreement when signing up to deal with the Troubles. He'd gone head-to-head with death before, there had been near-misses in the line of duty, but this felt different. Now, just sitting and waiting for death to come and claim him, he realized he really didn't want to die. Not now, with so many good things coming into his life, and especially not like this.

But it didn't matter. He and Audrey would solve the case and make this go away. She could always figure these things out. She had saved countless other people, she'd even saved Duke. She had never failed him on a case before. They would fix this. She would fix him.

Audrey turned the truck onto the road in front of the building strip housing the bookstore, and Nathan straightened up in his seat in anticipation. The street was lined with cars and Audrey had to drive halfway down the block to find a place to park. Nathan watched her to make sure she'd shut off the engine before he opened his door and climbed out onto the pavement. He waited for her to come around next to him, and he saw her half-open her mouth before she remembered and quickly shut it again, setting off down the pavement.

As they passed the pizza parlour Nathan figured out the reason for all of the cars. Through the front window he could see a huge crowd of people inside, and judging by the decorations it was some sort of party. Although people were dancing, he couldn't hear the music or the loud voices that should be coming from them. He didn't realize he'd stopped walking until he felt Audrey's hand in his, tugging him forward.

When he looked over at her, she frowned in concern and he saw her lips form the words, "You okay?"

"Fine," he said, shaking his head and starting to walk again. He tried to ignore the sick feeling that had boiled in his stomach as he was reminded of his – illness, as well as the chill in his gut when Audrey's hand slipped from his as she fell into step beside him. If it weren't for the fact that it would raise a lot of awkward questions from his partner that he didn't want to answer right now, he'd reach out and take her hand again just to feel like he was still grounded in the real world around him. That he wasn't just a ghost floating among them; existing but incapable of real interaction.

He held the bookshop door for Audrey as she walked in and the lack of bell made him look up curiously. There it was above the doorframe, the brass shape swinging from side to side, but it was silent. If it weren't so depressing, it might have been a captivating thing to watch.

Marion Yardley was standing behind the front desk, and as they walked in she straightened up and folded her arms over her chest defensively, scowling at them. He saw the derision and hostility showing openly on her face as she shot a short question at them, but her lips were hardly moving in her agitation and he couldn't make out what she was saying. In front of him, Audrey's posture shifted into cop-mode and he took up his usual stance directly behind her, trying to give off the impression that there was nothing wrong.

It was unnerving, watching the conversation going on between the two women without being able to hear any of it. Just as unnerving as it had been glancing between Audrey and Kelly and knowing that they were talking about him but not knowing what they were saying. Instead he was forced to stand and read the emotions that were crossing Marion Yardley's face. First was the hostility and defensiveness, then suspicion, then scepticism quickly replaced by confusion and curiosity, then fear and even something that looked like sadness before it all settled into a chilly indifference.

It felt like an incredibly long time later when Audrey nodded to Marion Yardley and turned to him, gesturing shortly for him to follow before heading out of the door. He made to give Marion a nod of acknowledgement before leaving, but the older woman was already busying herself with a small stack of books behind her desk, her tensed back turned on them. As he walked out of the shop he determinedly kept his eyes off the dismally swinging bell and anything else that he could think of that might have been making a noise he wouldn't hear.

"Well?" he asked Audrey when he reached her side. With a grim smile, she shook her head and started walking for the truck. Nathan bit back the urge to sigh and followed her. Right now he wanted answers and explanations, or at least theories, and all that he got was a shake of a head. What had she learned? What ruled Marion Yardley out? And if she was scratched off their list, where did they go next?

It seemed that he would have to wait for answers though, because Audrey's focus stayed on what she was doing as she climbed into the truck and turned on the ignition. Nathan settled himself awkwardly into the passenger seat, mentally making a note that he needed to clean out the things he'd left on the floor over there. Audrey was so much shorter than him that she'd never made comment on it, but even though he couldn't feel how uncomfortable it would be to have his legs stuck in at that angle, he was pretty sure it wasn't good for his knees.

During the short drive, he could tell that Audrey kept glancing at him. He could see her head moving out of the corner of his eye, and there was always that strange fluttering sensation in the pit of his stomach every time her gaze weighed on him. It was distracting and it was doing nothing to steady his already unstable nerves. They'd gone about four blocks before he gave up and said something. "Parker, do you think I'm going to explode or something? Because the staring makes it feel that way," he said dryly. When she had no smart assed response to that, he glanced over at her curiously, one eyebrow cocked, before he saw her lips moving and remembered. Whatever her sarcastic answer had been, it was wasted on him.

Actually letting his sigh out this time, he leaned back against the window and closed his eyes. It was painful how easily he kept forgetting about such a significant thing. He had always thought that with the loss of his sense of feeling, he'd trained his other senses into razor sharp precision. That he never took any of them for granted. But the truth of it was that somewhere along the way he'd stopped noticing things. Noises and sounds that had once been important had become catalogued and habitual again, noticed without consciously thinking about it. Background noise.

Things like the rumble of his trucks engine, the faint clicking that came from the piece of gravel trapped beneath the hubcap of the front passenger tire, the whisper of wind over the glass and the scratchy bass coming from the low volume of the radio, all of them had been carefully recalled and shuffled away into the back of his mind until he no longer consciously noticed them. Even now, when there was nothing but an oppressive silence pressing against his eardrums, he had to actually think about them before he really realized they were missing.

Just like in those years when his sense of touch had returned, he had started taking things for granted again. And now they were gone.

He felt the taunting fuzziness that precedes sleep tugging at his mind and he hastily opened his eyes, lifting his head away from the support of the window frame. Apparently the day's adrenaline was wearing off. It was probably a good thing the shift was nearly over.

Audrey seemed to be thinking about the same thing, because just a few minutes later she had waved a hand to get his attention. When he looked over at her she fixed him with a firm look and he watched her lips form the word, "Home." Her expression didn't really leave much room for argument. She seemed slightly surprised when he nodded in agreement, but she didn't comment on it as she turned onto the road leading to his house.

Audrey's car was parked to the side of his driveway and she pulled the truck in next to it before shutting it off. She placed the keys into his hand and he gave her a shallow nod of acknowledgement before climbing down into the drive and heading for the house. On the porch he turned around to call a goodnight to Audrey only to find her standing directly behind him. He raised a questioning eyebrow, and she just gestured at the door impatiently. Judging by the way she was tugged his coat – he vaguely wondered if he'd ever be getting that back, or if he really cared – tighter around herself, it must be starting to get chilly.

Nathan rolled his eyes at her behaviour, but obligingly unlocked the door and held it open for her as she walked inside. It was strange to watch Audrey walk in and make herself at home in his living room, hanging the coat on a hook by the door and sitting down on his sofa. Before today she had only been into his house perhaps three or four time. Now she was unlacing her furry boots and folding her legs up beneath her on the couch cushions like she was settling in for the evening.

Obviously attracted by the sound of their arrival, Delilah appeared at the end of the hall. Her tongue was lolling out of the side of her mouth and she looked like she was smiling as she gazed up at Nathan. Immediately she waddled to him and nudged her head against his shin. He couldn't repress the small smile as he reached down to quickly scratch her ears in greeting.

"So I take it you're staying for dinner?" Nathan asked vaguely, glancing across at Audrey. She simply flashed him her typical Audrey smirk and he fought back another smile. Wandering into the kitchen, he called back over his shoulder, "Then I hope you like tomato soup."

Snatching a can from the pantry, he turned around to find that Audrey had followed him into the kitchen as well. She sat down in one of the barstools at the island counter as he gathered a saucepan and set the soup to cook, and again he could feel her eyes tracking his every movement. Even after he'd filled two bowls with bright red soup and they'd sat down on opposite sides of the island, he could tell that she was watching him intently. Midway through the meal, he gave her a pointed look, arching an eyebrow and scowling, but she looked unabashed and went on with what she was doing.

"Let's get some work done on the case while we're here," Nathan said when he'd finished his soup, looking for any excuse to get Audrey distracted so she would stop watching him. He took their bowls to the sink, stepping carefully because, as always when he was home, Delilah was shadowing him, and then they moved back into the living room. He tracked down a legal pad he used for writing notes on cases when he was away from the office, and handed it and a pen to Audrey with the instructions, "Tell me what happened with Marion Yardley."

Audrey nodded and Nathan waited for her to finish and hand the notepad back to him, and then he read the summary written out in her looping scrawl.

She didn't kill Nurse Waters, at least not on purpose. She liked her, said the nurse was good to her husband. I really wasn't getting killer vibes off her. This time at least.

"So we believe she could've killed Halter, but not Waters," Nathan mused, shaking his head. "Great. Maybe she had an accomplice. No, hear me out," he added when Audrey looked sceptical. "Maybe she knows someone who has this sand Trouble, and she got that person to take Halter out for her. But now that person is killing more people she didn't ask for. Maybe trying to frame her."

Audrey still didn't look convinced, but she nodded and scribbled Accomplice? into a margin on the notepad. Then in the body of the page, she wrote, Or maybe it's another person entirely. But who?

They spent the remainder of the evening revising their previous list of suspects, trying to fathom links between the victims and the suspects, and writing up a long list of possible theories that they would need to check into in the morning when they got back to the office. It was well passed sundown by the time they had filled three sheets of paper with ideas and their progressively wilder new scenarios had finally reached the point of being completely irrational – even for Haven. After Audrey had yawned for the eleventh time, Nathan had stood up and declared that he was going to bed.

For a moment he was sure that he'd seen something like genuine fear alight in Audrey's eyes as she leapt to her feet next to him. Then she hastily schooled it into a normal expression of stubborn indifference, and she snatched up the notepad again.

Where am I sleeping?

Nathan read the sentence and snorted. "Your place?" he offered even though he could tell already that those were not her plans in the slightest. Her firm scowl chased off any doubt he'd had, and he sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose distractedly. "I don't need a babysitter, Parker."

There was a still moment when Nathan kept his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose in a fruitless attempt to make himself believe it would relieve some of the tension in his brain the way it had years ago when he'd been able to feel. Then Audrey had grabbed his wrist and jerked his hand away from his face, and shoved the legal pad into his grip. He gave her a curious look before turning his gaze to the messier than usual scrawl.

They both died the morning after. I'm not leaving.

Something caught in Nathan's chest as he processed those words. It was true. Both Halter and Waters had died on the morning after their hearing had failed them. Whether that was a coincidence or some type of symptom, he didn't know, but apparently Audrey was not going to take that risk. And he realized it really was fear he'd seen in her eyes for that brief second. She was afraid if she left, then when she came back in the morning, he'd be dead. Rationally, as much as he didn't like to think about it, it wasn't like there was any evidence to contradict that theory either.

Letting out a small groan, he dropped the notepad onto the coffee table. "The guest room is this way," he said grudgingly and led the way down the hall. He opened the door of the small room that was furnished with a futon and a cabinet full of extra linens. "You can sleep here. There's extra blankets and pillows in the cupboard there, and I can find you a tee-shirt or something if you want something to sleep in."

Audrey nodded and he saw her lips shape the word, "thanks." He gave a short nod and disappeared into his room, digging an old tee-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that were a little short in the leg from the closet and bringing them back to her. She took them with a smile, and he could see her saying, "goodnight Nathan."

"Night Parker," he said and closed the door behind him, before returning to his room. Delilah had already gone in and made herself comfortable on the bed, and he changed quickly before climbing under the covers. As unnerved as he was at the thought of Audrey sleeping across the hall, in his house and in his clothes nonetheless, and as frantic as his brain was from trying to figure out this case, he was exhausted. He felt sleepy and heavy, and he was pretty sure that if he'd been able to feel his muscles, they would all be aching. Whatever it was, he wasn't getting up out of the bed anytime soon. Gravity was winning this round.

Delilah shifted around and crawled up closer to his side, resting her head on his arm. In the half-light coming through the window from the porch light of his neighbours' house, he could see her dark eyes fixed on him. Although she'd been lively and contented since he'd brought her into the house, at the moment she looked tired and aged and sad again. She looked like the dog they'd found alone in her house when her master never came home.

"You know it's got me, don't you?" he murmured to her, stroking her head. "You can tell. You know it's the same thing that killed your other owner too, don't you?" Delilah nuzzled her head further up his arm, her round body right up against his, and he watched her body heave with the groan she let out.

Closing his eyes, Nathan tried to shove away all of the dark thoughts until sleep finally claimed him and he drifted under the whims of his imagination.


	12. Inconclusive Answers

Audrey tried to go to sleep, but sleep just wouldn't come to her. She lay on the plush futon mattress, tossing and turning while her mind filled with dark and frightening thoughts that wouldn't leave her alone. Images of Jeffrey Halter and Angelina Waters' broken bodies were interspersed with pictures of Nathan; reclining in his office chair at the station, eating pancakes at the diner, doubling over in pain in the living room of the Colden house, laying in a pool of unnaturally bright blood.

After an hour of anxious restlessness, she couldn't handle it any longer. She tossed aside the blankets and climbed out of the bed. Nathan's sweatpants were rolled up several times at the cuff and her feet were still barely visible, and his shirt hung to nearly her knees. Keeping quiet, even though she could have made all the noise she liked and it wouldn't have made a difference to the house's other occupant, she padded across the hall and pushed open the door to his bedroom.

Nathan was lying on his back in the bed, tucked beneath the covers with Delilah curled against his side. In the illumination from the light outside the window, he looked almost peaceful in his sleep. Content that her partner was still safe, she sighed and went back to the guest bedroom, and back to her thoughts.

What clue were they missing? It was like the answer was just outside her grasp, just beyond the reach of her fingertips. It was close enough that she could nearly touch it, could get the faintest feeling that it was there, but just far enough that she couldn't get a good enough grip on it to know it clearly. It was maddening, and even more so because Nathan's life might rest on that stupid little elusive clue.

Groaning, Audrey perched herself on the edge of the futon mattress and slammed her palm into the downy pillow. It did nothing to alleviate the tension in her mind, but it did at least feel good to funnel out some of that frustration. Even if it was just at the pillow.

Needing to feel like she was doing something, and knowing that sleep was something that was beyond her at the moment, she stood up again and wandered back into the living room. All of their notes and files were still spread out on the coffee table, and Audrey turned on the lamps at either end of the couch and then settled herself in the middle. Steeling her brain, she threw herself back into the facts and figures they had already spent hours reviewing. She was determined that she would find that missing piece that was evading her, even if she had to search all night.

At eleven she went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee to clear her head. While she waited for the water to warm, she made her way back to Nathan's bedroom to check that he was still alright. As the night wore on, it became a habitual routine. She would sift through papers at the table for about an hour, then check on Nathan, then refill her coffee cup and head back to the table.

She couldn't fail to notice that the longer into the night it got, the less restful he looked. He never woke, at least not that she could tell, but he went from appearing peaceful, to grimacing in his sleep, to fidgeting and tossing sometime around three in the morning. She started wondering if he was in some sort of pain, his unconscious body registering what he normally couldn't, or if it was just a nightmare. Or if, worst of all perhaps, it was some side effect of the sand condition, something that was going to make his situation deteriorate even further. If maybe it was what had made both of the others die first thing in the morning.

Feeling all the more determined, Audrey went back to the living room and began scanning the paperwork with renewed fervour. It had to be there. It just had to be. She would find it.

The sun was just beginning to lighten the horizon outside the window when Audrey's eyes landed on a scribbled notation beneath a name and everything clicked into place. There it was, the little clue that she had been missing. A forensics request that she had completely forgotten in all of the chaos that had followed. That was her answer, right there. And she needed to go get it.

Audrey jumped up and hurried down to Nathan's bedroom, ready to wake him and tell him what she'd found. She opened the door just as he let out a groan in his sleep, and she hesitated. It wasn't like she'd be able to wake him and they didn't really have much time to waste.

Back in the living room she grabbed a blank sheet from the notepad, wrote a hasty note explaining where she'd gone, and laid it on his bedside table. "I'll be back, Nathan," she murmured aloud. "I'll find him and get him to fix you, I promise." He simply moaned and rolled his head to the other side without waking.

She dressed hastily, paying no attention to how wrinkled her clothes had become overnight, and then rushed out the door without bothering to grab anything more than the keys to Nathan's truck; she was in a hurry, she wasn't wasting time fighting with her car's finicky ignition. The truck's heaters were slow getting started and she had forgotten a coat, but the cold was the least of her concerns. The address was engrained in her mind and it was with a frighteningly single-mindedness that she drove.

The little blocky apartment building was set back from the main road and, apart from the occasional coloured curtain or plant in a window, completely devoid of decoration. Audrey pulled the truck into the car park at a haphazard angle, taking up four stalls, before jumping out. She practically jogged up the stairs to the second floor and then found the door marked 4B. Drawing her sidearm with one hand, she pounded on the door with the other.

There was a series of thuds and scuffling sounds, and then a loud exclamation of, "Who in the hell's hammerin' at my door at the God damn crack of dawn?"

"Haven PD," Audrey shouted, instinctively tightening her grip on her 9mm. "Open the door!"

From behind the door came a long string of growled oaths. Audrey waited about ten seconds before pounding on the door again and the curses got louder. "What the hell you want?" Jimmy Daley was shouting before he'd even opened the door all the way. He was standing there in a ragged shirt and boxers with an open bathrobe that looked like it had seen better days hanging on his shoulders. The sleepy scowl he fixed her with twisted up his face, and his eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'm not talkin' to you anymore, Barbie doll. Thought I made that clear."

In response, Audrey lifted her sidearm until it was pointed at his torso and returned his glare. "What did you do to Nathan?" she ground out, fighting to keep control of herself.

At the sight of her gun, Jimmy had taken several hasty steps backward and Audrey took a half step forward so he couldn't shut the door on her. "What the hell is this?" Jimmy demanded, his wide frightened eyes ruining his irritable expression. "You can't just show up and be pointing guns at people."

"I know it was you," Audrey said, not loosening her stance. "You took out Jeffrey Halter and then Nurse Waters, and now you're going after Nathan. Well you're not going to get him. Stop it, fix him now!"

"What the hell are you on about?" Jimmy asked frantically, backing up another three steps until he collided with the back of the couch. "I ain't done nothin' to nobody. I already told you that."

Audrey's heart was thudding painfully in her chest and she shifted her grip on the handgun. This was it, it had to be him. "You had the sand," she said. "The sand in your wheelbarrow, it was the same colour as the sand found in Halter and Waters. It matched what we found."

"It's just sand!" Jimmy exclaimed, throwing his hands up incredulously. "I bought it down at Mary's. The city's got my receipts for it if you don't believe me. Lotsa people buy sand. It don't make me a fetchin' killer and it don't give you no right to be waving that damn gun in my face."

Audrey felt her resolve shake. As the adrenaline of her epiphany began to wear off, doubt began to creep in. "At Mary's?" she asked uncertainly. "You buy your sand from an art store?"

"Yeah, it's the on'y place that sells it white," Jimmy said, his eyes still firmly fixed on the nose of her gun. "The stuff from the hardware store is that dirty yellow colour, the city planners don't like it s'much as the white. And I ain't put none of that sand inside nobody. I on'y get so much sand a month, if I gotta buy extra it come outta my paycheck."

This time Audrey slowly lowered the gun, although she didn't holster it. All she'd been able to think about was that they had sent the request in, and that Jimmy had been furious with Nathan when he'd taken the sand, and that Nathan had seemed so certain. That had been all the proof she'd needed, but now she was far less certain. Could it be just a coincidence? Perhaps she'd been wrong.

Trying to regain her bearings, Audrey continued to scowl dangerously at Jimmy Daley. "Do you know anything about what happened to Angelina Waters?"

"Who the hell is that?" Jimmy replied.

"Nurse Waters, she worked on rotation for the hospital," Audrey said levelly. Maybe he knew the nurse, just didn't know her by name. That was still plausible. There was still a chance. "Maybe she was the one who treated your arm. Maybe she's the one who filed your injury as work-related, so you didn't get the insurance benefits. Is that what did it? That's what set you off?"

"What the blue blazes are you talking about, Barbie?" Jimmy asked, his face twisted up in confusion. "I don't know what the hell you mean. I didn't even see no skirty nurses when I was there. Just some dumpy old black woman at the front desk and then Dr. Kendrickson. I wish there'd been some hot lady nurse there, that woulda made the trip much better, but there weren't."

Audrey frowned even harder, because even with her limited people skills she could tell that Jimmy was being genuine. He really knew nothing about Angelina Waters. She was wrong. And that meant that she was still no closer to finding the Troubled person and saving Nathan.

"Thanks for your time, Mr. Daley," she said in a tight voice, managing to summon up a slightly sardonic smirk to retain some of her usual demeanour, while on the inside she was rushing towards panic again. "If I have any more questions, I'll be in touch."

"Yeah, yeah, just put that damn gun away, wouldja?" Jimmy said and his shoulders remained tense until she'd slipped the sidearm into its holster. She had just turned her back when his voice, once again condescending and sarcastic, called out, "So someone offed Wuornos too, did they? Good riddance."

Before Audrey could even recall moving, Jimmy Daley had fallen backwards over his sofa and the knuckles of her right hand were throbbing painfully. He gaped up at her from the floor, clutching his bleeding nose with his hands, and she stared back. "Do not talk about my partner like that," she said in a threateningly low voice, and then without a backward glance she turned and left the tiny apartment.

It was only after she was halfway across the car park that it occurred to her that she'd probably be facing a police brutality charge as soon as she made it into the station. It only took a tenth of a second to decide that she didn't really care.

He'd deserved it anyways.

As Audrey struggled with the keys to the old Bronco, she was already planning her next stop. Jimmy Daley said he'd bought the sand from the art supply store. She would stop there and get a list of all the people who had bought that same sand and see if any names looked familiar. She would find the link. She had too. Distantly, she could hear the radio inside the truck squawking feebly. It didn't really concern her, because all of her focus would be on solving the Sand case, and nothing short of the entire town exploding would change that. Or at least it didn't concern her until she opened the door and heard a familiar name.

"Nathan honey, you there?"

Sighing, Audrey hauled herself up into the truck and grabbed the radio. "Laverne, it's Parker," she said.

"Audrey? Where's Nathan?" the old woman asked curiously.

"Home, sick," Audrey answered shortly. She didn't want to get into the details. No one else needed to know what was going on with Nathan, and she knew that he wouldn't want people knowing anyway. He was too private a person to want the co-worker's wives bringing by breads and dinners and home remedies for the common cold, or whatever sort of thing it was people did in a small town like Haven.

Laverne hummed her understanding, although it sounded a bit sceptical even through the rough connection of the radio. "Well did he get a dog? Because the neighbour just phoned in a complaint that there's been a dog barking in his house for the last ten minutes and it won't stop."

Audrey felt her heart drop into her stomach and a sickening wave of foreboding rushed over her. "I'm on it," she said and then slammed the radio back into its base. Flipping on the overhead lights, she turned the truck around and sped back out the way she'd come. As she blazed around street corners and past stop signs, she couldn't help but count the seconds, feeling like she was facing a giant countdown to something horrible.

Why was Delilah barking? Why hadn't Nathan gotten her to stop? Was it simply because he was asleep and couldn't hear it? Or had something else happened? Please God, don't let anything else have happened…

The truck's brakes squealed in the cold air as she pulled to a hard stop in the drive, narrowly avoiding her own car. Throwing it into park and yanking out the keys, Audrey bolted across the yard, from which she could hear Delilah's loud, repetitive barking. Audrey was shouting before she'd even opened the front door, even though she knew it was a useless gesture. "Nathan!"

Nothing was out of place in the living room; the coffee table was still covered in papers and empty coffee mugs, a worn throw blanket she'd been sitting under was draped lazily over the arm of the sofa, and Nathan's jacket – the one he'd been wearing since she'd stolen his – was laying over the back of the armchair. Either way, Delilah's barking wasn't coming from this room. It was coming from the master bedroom.

Audrey's heart had leapt up to pound in her throat, making her breathless and light-headed as she tore down the hall and to Nathan's room. Delilah was standing in the middle of the bedroom floor and the moment Audrey appeared in the room the old dog fell silent. It wasn't the dog that she was concerned with though. Heaped awkwardly on the floor beside the bureau was a long-limbed body in flannel pyjama pants and a gray tee-shirt. A body that wasn't moving. A body whose face was streaked with crimson.

"Nathan!"


	13. Calling in the Cavalry

Audrey vaulted over the bed and slid to her knees beside Nathan. Her heart seemed to have stopped short and the world around her was spinning. No, no, this couldn't be happening. This had to be a dream.

"Nathan," she gasped out. Her hands were shaking as she gently rolled him onto his back, but the motion didn't wake him. There was a large gash in his forehead, which was the cause of the blood that was staining his face. Panicked, she placed two fingers against the side of his neck, holding her breath. There was a shallow throbbing beneath her fingertips, faint but steady.

"Oh thank God." Audrey felt all of the air rush out of her lungs as she felt his heart beating. He wasn't dead. Shaking away the dizzying wave of relief that had swept over her, she began checking him more thoroughly. He seemed to be uninjured apart from the cut on his forehead, still bleeding but not dangerously deep. Distantly she wondered what had happened, but she wouldn't know until he woke up. For now, she just needed to get him comfortable and make sure he didn't bleed out.

It took a great deal of manoeuvring for Audrey to get Nathan from the floor back up onto his bed. Somehow it had never really occurred to her before just how much bigger than her that Nathan was, but that fact was fully pronounced as she was trying to lift six feet and some-odd inches of dead weight – she grimaced at her own use of the term – the mere four feet from the hardwood to the mattress. She was sure it must have looked ridiculous as she half-propped his body up against hers while transferring him one limb at a time onto the bed, but she managed to make it and that was her only concern.

From the bathroom she grabbed a first aid kit and a damp washcloth, and then set about patching up the gash on his head. It was a straight line that ran between his eyebrow and his hairline and there were definite signs of bruising beginning to form around it. As far as she could tell, it looked like he'd hit his head really hard against something. A quick glance at the sharp edges of the bureau he'd been laying by gave her a pretty good guess what.

After cleaning all of the blood from his face, she used the gauze and medical tape to bandage his head and then finally declared it finished. If it didn't stop bleeding soon it might need stitches, and the bandages would definitely need to be redone later by someone with more skill than her, but for now they would serve their purpose. He would be alright.

Sighing, Audrey settled herself on the opposite end of the bed, watching Nathan. Even though he looked calm and peaceful, apart from the bloodstains on the shoulder of his tee-shirt of course, she knew the truth. He was fading, and fast. Whatever this Sand ailment was, it was taking its toll on him. They were running out of time and she was no closer to finding out the answers than she'd been when they started. And now, to top it all off, she was afraid to even leave his bedroom again. What if the next time she came back, she couldn't find his heartbeat? She couldn't take that.

She needed back up, and there was only one person besides Nathan that she trusted enough for something like this; she took out her phone and dialled the now familiar number.

After three rings, the phone was answered by the typical sarcastic drawl. "Why if it isn't Agent Officer Parker? I don't even get the courtesy of a personal visit when you want to arrest me for something now?"

"Duke, I need a favour," Audrey admitted, not even close to in the mood to play along with his flirtatious bantering.

"You need me," Duke repeated in an interested tone. "Well I have to admit I like the sound of that. Every man likes being needed by a lady, even if that lady is a cop." He paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, "Alright, what did you have in mind?"

Audrey took a deep breath, glancing across at Nathan's pale face. "Nathan is sick. I need your help."

"Oh hell no," Duke said abruptly. "Absolutely not. I am not babysitting another sick Nathan. Have you forgotten that the last time you asked me to watch over him, he tried to strangle me and we had to chain him to the dock after you tazed him? I'm not doing it, not again."

"I'm not asking you to," Audrey cut in before he could continue ranting, and he fell silent mid-sentence. "I need help with something else. I can't leave him alone, but I really need to be working on a case."

"So take him to the hospital," Duke offered and she could practically hear his unconcerned shrug. "That's what they're for, isn't it?"

"It's not that kind of sick," Audrey said wearily. "It's not hospital sick, it's –" she trailed off, trying to find the right way to describe the situation. "It's Haven sick."

There was a heavy silence on the phone line, and then Duke asked in a solemn voice that she had rarely heard him use, "The Troubles?"

"I think so," she agreed. "And I need to find out who's causing this so I can fix it."

Duke sighed loudly and then after a quiet moment she heard him make a low noise of irritation, although whether it was aimed at her or at himself she had no idea. "Alright, but you owe me," he relented. "You're just lucky I don't have anything better to do today. What do you need me to do?"

Audrey told him where he needed to visit and he grumbled out a reluctant sounding reply before hanging up the phone. As soon as she'd heard the dial tone, she punched in a new phone number and waited for the answer. It rang four times before a cheerful female voice said, "Mary's Art Supplies, what can I do for you?"

"Hello Mary, this is Agent Parker," she said, trying to force calm into her voice despite the fact that she was anxiously watching Nathan's face for any sign of awareness while she spoke. "I'm running an investigation and I need some help from you."

"Of course, what can I do for you?" Mary said.

"I need your records of anyone you've sold your white sand to in the last few months," Audrey said. "I'm sending someone over to pick them up from you."

"Alright, I can do that," Mary said and Audrey could actually hear the burning curiosity in her voice. "You sending Nathan?"

"No, Duke Crocker," Audrey said and braced herself.

"You want me to hand over my records to Duke Crocker?" Mary asked sceptically.

"He's working as a liaison for the police department," Audrey explained, injecting authority into her tone. It was a tone she was well used to using as a federal agent, the one that she used to assert her command over local police departments when she took over jurisdiction on a case. "I can assure you that your files will be safe and I will personally return them to you when I've finished with them."

Mary still sounded uncertain but she murmured a short, "Alright, Agent Parker, I can do that."

"Thank you, Mary," Audrey said and then closed her phone. With a sigh, she dropped her phone on the mattress and let her head fall into her hands. All of this waiting and hoping and thinking was going to kill her. She couldn't stand just sitting around and praying for answers to fall into her lap while Nathan was dying. The only problem was that she couldn't even make herself leave the bedroom, let alone the house. The last time she'd left she had come back to find him bleeding on the floor. She wasn't going to risk it again.

On the floor at the foot of the bed, Delilah lay down with a heavy groan, and Audrey couldn't help but agree with that sentiment. She wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep and forget about all of this if only for just a little while. If it weren't for the fact that she didn't know how much longer Nathan had, she would do it too. Instead she dragged herself off the bed and went out into the living room, gathered all of her scattered notes, and brought them back into the room with her.

Sitting down on the floor, she spread the papers around her and continued to search for links. The problem was that she was steadily running out of suspects and possibilities. What if it was someone that they hadn't even considered yet? Someone not even on their lists? Audrey began stretching her mind, trying to think if there was anyone else that they had encountered who was not on their suspect list that might have motivation for this. Or if it was someone with no motivation, someone doing these things on accident or doing them without regard as to who they hurt? If that was true, then they had next to no chance of figuring it out before the death toll went up again.

She had been working for about a half hour when the sound of someone knocking at the door sent her flying to her feet, slipping on a few of her note sheets in her haste. Once she'd regained her bearings, she half-jogged to the front door and opened it, breathing out a grateful sigh when she saw the familiar curly haired man. Another breath of relief left her when she saw the manila folder he was clutching in one hand, which she grabbed and immediately began flipping through.

"Hi to you too," Duke grumbled, folding his arms.

Audrey looked up from the folder and gave him an apologetic smile. "Sorry, come in," she said, stepping back so he could walk around her into the house. "I'm just – we're sort of on a deadline."

"What happened?" Duke asked and she was a little surprised to see that he actually looked concerned about Nathan. "Is he really that bad?"

Audrey nodded toward the couch and sat down, tucking her feet beneath her as he sat down across from her. She took a deep breath and then gave him a condensed version of the last few days, starting with Halter's apparent suicide and ending with what she'd found when she'd come back from interrogating Jimmy Daley. By the time she finished, Duke was frowning slightly and his eyes had gotten a distant look that showed how deep in thought he was.

"And this file is going to help you figure out who's causing this?" Duke asked, staring suspiciously at the folder in her hands.

"The same kind of sand was present in both Halter and Waters, and I'm betting it's what's in Nathan too," she said. "And Mary's is the only place in Haven that sells that kind of sand, so whoever's doing it must have gotten it from there. Which means our killer is on this register."

Duke seemed to consider her words for a moment and then he nodded. "Alright, hand me half the stack," he said, holding out a hand expectantly. "What are the names I should be looking out for?"

"You're going to help?" she asked in surprise.

"After all the times I've helped out in the past, you are still so shocked," he remarked dryly. "Yes, I'm going to help. Because even though you're a cop, I like you somehow. And I can't let anyone else off Nathan because then I'll have to find someone new to hate and torment, and it's so time consuming breaking in a new person."

Audrey stared at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then she smiled. She had just opened her mouth to make a sarcastic comment about him being sentimental, when something else made her words catch in her throat.

"Parker!"

The startled yell from down the hall made Audrey's heart double beat and she immediately dropped the file on the table, springing to her feet. She bolted down the hallway and threw open the bedroom door, and had gotten four steps in when she stopped short, not sure what she was seeing.

Nathan was crouched on the bed in a defensive position, his back against the headboard and his arms held protectively in front of him. Only his head was moving, twisting from one side to the other as his eyes, unnaturally wide, panned the room. Except his eyes never fixed on any one object, just continued to flick around like he was searching for something. They had passed over her for the third time before the truth dawned on her.

He couldn't see.

"Parker?" he shouted again, voice quavering slightly.

"Oh Nathan," she breathed out, taking another step into the room. Once again his unfocused eyes swept over the place where she was standing without the slightest hint of recognition.

"Why – He's – Is he blind?" Audrey didn't realize that Duke had followed her, but he was standing in the doorway staring at Nathan with something that might almost have been fear in his gaze.

"I think so," she answered sadly, turning back to watch Nathan. All of his muscles were tensed, ready for action that he wouldn't even know had come. He was now deprived of all five senses, and was stranded in a body with no connection to the world around. Tears prickled in the corners of Audrey's eyes as she stared at her helpless partner, who was usually her port in the storm and now wouldn't know if she was centimetres from his face, screaming and shaking him.

"What do we do now?" Duke asked uncertainly. "He's – he won't even know we're here, will he?"

Audrey didn't answer, just crossed to the bed and kneeled on the mattress in front of Nathan. His eyes continued to slide over her without stopping, and any usual sort of recognition he would've shown at her presence was missing. The itch in her eyes grew worse and she was as powerless to stop it as she was to fix her partner.

Solely for her own benefit, she stretched out a hand toward him. She needed some sort of comfort, a little physical contact that she trusted only Nathan to give her. Never in her life had she been a physical sort of person – because of her upbringing, she was sure – but with Nathan it felt different. Nathan was different. So she reached out and laid her hand on the back of his just to make herself feel better.

Nathan's hand immediately flipped over beneath hers and his fingers closed around hers almost painfully tight. "Parker." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. His other hand came to join the first, sandwiching her hand between his palms, and he clung to her like a lifeline. Audrey couldn't do anything but stare in shock at her partner, the partner who couldn't feel anything but who had somehow known when she'd laid her hand on his. It didn't seem possible… It couldn't be…

Tentatively, Audrey's other hand stretched out and she brushed her fingers against his cheek. Nathan closed his eyes and leaned into the touch, pressing his skin more firmly against hers. "Audrey," he breathed and he sounded relieved as the muscles in his body relaxed.

She didn't understand how it happened, or why, or even when, since he knew it was her without any other indicator which made her assume it wasn't a new development. All she did know was the one impossible fact:

"You can feel me."


	14. The Path Narrows

Audrey was pretty sure that of all the unexpected things that she had seen since coming to Haven, this was the one that had left her the most stunned. Nathan could feel her. He could stick his hand into fire without flinching and didn't even blink at being shot, but here he was, a determined look on his face as he held her hand in his, the fingers of his other hand curiously tracing the lines and curves of her hand and wrist.

"Parker," Nathan said and Audrey's heart clenched when she heard the quaver of fear beneath his casual tone. "It's getting worse. I can't see anything now." His eyes had finally stopped panning around, and now were fixed in the direction of their joined hands. He took an uneasy breath and continued, "I don't even know where I am, there's nothing. Just you."

"Of course." Audrey glanced over her shoulder to see Duke still hovering in the doorframe, and his eyes were widened in some sort of comprehension. "I can't believe I never figured it out. It's you."

"What's me?" Audrey asked, bristling slightly at what sounded like an accusation.

"The one woman in the world he can feel," Duke answered. "He told me, when we were at Va-" He paused for a moment, grimacing, and then swallowed and continued, "at Vanessa's house. I always thought he was talking about Jess, but he wasn't. It was you."

Audrey's head was reeling at this new piece of information. All of a sudden so many things made sense. Nathan's abrupt tendency to touch her; the high-fives, the handshakes, the time he'd brushed ketchup from her chin at the diner. She had thought perhaps he was just trying to learn how to be social again, that maybe their friendship was inspiring him to become less of a socially awkward mess, but it was something so much more.

There was just one discrepancy that Audrey couldn't figure out. "He told you?"

"It was when we were all obsessing about fate," Duke said and she could tell that he knew what she was thinking. Why, of all people on earth, would Nathan tell his big secret to Duke Crocker, whom he tolerated at best, and not his partner and best friend? "He was trying to prove that fate must play something if a man who can't feel anything suddenly has a woman come into his life that he can feel. I thought he was just telling me to try and one-up me on the argument. You know how Nathan loves winning an argument. Especially with me."

Nodding in understanding, Audrey still couldn't help but wonder why he hadn't told her. Then she frowned with a sick feeling in her stomach; who was she to judge Nathan for keeping secrets when she had a beautiful pendant necklace hidden away in her dresser, marked with the initials of Lucy Ripley, which she had yet to tell him about? Still, she stared down at where Nathan's fingertips were circling her wrist, and assured herself that they would most definitely be having a chat about this when he got better.

"We've got to get back to those files," Audrey said determinedly, looking up at Duke again.

"What're you gonna do with Pinocchio there?" Duke asked, raising an eyebrow.

Audrey scowled at the jibe but didn't want to waste time arguing manners with him right now. Instead she carefully extracted her hand from Nathan's and quickly stripped off her jacket and outer shirt. Guilt lit in her at the fear and helplessness that had filled her partner's eyes at the loss of contact.

"Audrey, don't go, I'm sorry I didn't tell you," he said in a quick whisper. "About being able to feel you, I mean. I know I should've, I just – I didn't know how and –" Audrey hastily grabbed his hands again, not wanting him to get the wrong idea. Now wearing just her tank top, she placed his hand on her bicep and then stepped off of the bed, gently trying to get him to follow her. It took a second for him to get the idea, and then he inched cautiously toward the edge of the bed. He reached the end without noticing and she had to place her free hand on his chest to keep him from falling while he got his footing. She didn't fail to notice that he didn't even blink at the hand on his chest. So it was definitely just skin-to-skin contact then, like she thought.

It was slow moving getting Nathan out to the living room. He clung awkwardly to her arm with both hands, his steps shuffling and an agitated frown on his face. "I really don't like this," he muttered when they'd gotten halfway down the hall. Audrey touched his hand reassuringly and he smiled in response, even though it looked more like a grimace. Getting him to understand the message when she tried to make him sit on the couch was just as complicated; she had to push down on his shoulders, trying not to feel embarrassed as she slipped her hands beneath the collar of his shirt so he could feel her, and when he furrowed his brow and asked, "Sit?" she placed his palms on the side of her face and nodded.

Audrey settled herself into the couch beside Nathan, his hand still curled around her arm, and Duke was already in the armchair across from them, spreading out the files he'd retrieved from the floor of Nathan's bedroom. Without speaking, they split the papers between them on the table and Audrey and Duke quickly set to work. The air in the room was tense as they flipped through pages, the quiet only broken by the rustling of paper and their occasional noise on discovering a familiar name, only to fade away when they realized it was read wrong, or someone entirely unrelated.

Nathan never spoke, although he did let out an agitated noise every few minutes that would make Duke look up and glare pointlessly at him. His hand never left her arm, and he had drawn himself flush with her side. Audrey had to wonder if perhaps he could feel her body heat, or if it was something he did subconsciously. She made a note to ask him about it if – when! - when things went back to normal.

"Anything?" Audrey asked Duke after twenty minutes, straightening up and feeling the vertebrae in her spine stretch and pop after being stuck in one position so long.

"No suspicious names that I've seen," he said, turning over another sheet of paper to read down the back. "I've seen James Daley's name at least twice a page, but you've scratched his name out on the suspect list." He glanced across at her and raised a questioning eyebrow.

"I've already interrogated him," she answered simply, unconsciously flexing the bruised knuckles of her right hand. Duke noticed and a smirk crossed his face before he nodded and dutifully went back to his papers.

We're running out of ideas, Audrey thought to herself desperately, dragging her free hand through her dishevelled hair. Looking sideways at Nathan, tense and uncertain and clinging to her arm with both hands, she vainly wished that he could help her. She was good at solving the mysteries of the Troubles, she wasn't so modest that she couldn't admit that, but she rarely did it alone. Nathan was always around for her bounce her theories off of, to keep her grounded when she let her fancies take over. And now that the stakes had gone up so far, she needed him more than ever.

What have I missed? she asked herself, eyes glazing over the papers scattered across nearly every flat surface in Nathan's living room. There had to be one more place they hadn't checked, one more alibi they hadn't prodded or one more register that would pinpoint their killer. They had checked on the sand that had been used on all the victims, but that was turning up nothing. Half of their original list had been weeded out when they'd checked the connections between the victims. Was there another place where Halter and Waters and Nathan were all connected? Think, Audrey, damn it!

Halter had visited all five of their original suspects. They had scratched out the vacationing family after Waters had been killed and Nathan had gotten sick, because they had been out of town and had had no contact with Nathan. She was still uncertain about Marion Yardley, even though she claimed to like Nurse Waters and she had only ever been hostile to Audrey, not Nathan. As much as she hated him, Audrey felt fairly confident that James Daley was innocent. He had seemed too surprised to hear that Nathan was ill. And he didn't claim to have ever met Nurse Waters.

If only they could be sure of who Nurse Waters had seen in the days before her death.

An audible gasp left Audrey as her head snapped up. Duke looked over at her in alarm. "You alright there?" he asked uncertainly.

"I think I've just figured out another way we could find the killer," she said in a rush. After debating for a quick second, she said, "Can you stay here and keep going through these, and call me if you find anything?"

"Uh, sure," Duke said, still watching her in confusion. Audrey grabbed Nathan's arm and pulled him to his feet again, which made him look around wildly. Ignoring the fact that she looked a wreck, and that Nathan was still in his pyjamas, Audrey snatched the truck keys off the end table and walked him to the front door. She contemplated grabbing jackets for them both, but she doubted she could get him to release her arm to put them on. She did manage to get him to manoeuvre his feet into a pair of boots waiting beside the front door, although he'd grumbled irritably the whole time, and then she finally led him outside.

"Parker, where are you taking me?" Nathan asked as they slowly crossed the porch. Audrey couldn't think of a way to answer, although most of her attention was focused on making sure Nathan didn't fall down the steps. It was a lot harder than she had expected.

As they walked the length of the stone path to the truck, she flattened the truck key between their palms. She could feel the sharp contrast of his warm skin around the jagged edges of the cold metal, and she hoped dearly that he could too. Nathan stopped walking almost instantly and he frowned thoughtfully. "There's a spot where I can't feel you," he said slowly. "What is that?"

He squeezed her hand tighter, so tightly that Audrey's fingers were groaning in protest, and flexed his palm against hers. "It's – little and thin and –" he screwed his face up in concentration so much that his nose wrinkled. "Is it a key?"

Surprised at how quickly he'd gotten it, Audrey took his chin in her free hand and made him nod. Nathan almost smiled. "Don't do that, it makes me feel weird and I don't need help with that right now," he said, gently pulling his chin out of her grip. "Just, um, squeeze my hand; once for 'yes' and twice for 'no,' okay?"

Audrey slipped the key out and then squeezed his hand once. He nodded. "Good, so it's a key?" One squeeze. "A key for what? The – the house?" Two squeezes. "No, that doesn't make sense. The truck then?" One squeeze. "We're getting in the truck?" Audrey squeezed his hand one last time and tugged on his arm to get him moving again. "Where are we going? No, you can't answer that. I really don't like this."

Nathan let her lead him around to the passenger side of the truck and when she stopped he asked, "We're at the truck?" One squeeze. "Okay, well, just point me toward it and I'll do my best to climb in." Then Audrey assumed he meant to be muttering, because his voice lowered just slightly when he added, "This'll be a disaster." She decided to let the comment slide on account of the fact that he couldn't hear himself to know that he wasn't even close to whispering.

Audrey opened the door then steered him toward it and patted his shoulders from behind to let him know. She hovered behind while he climbed awkwardly into the cab. It was a bit of trial and error, but eventually Audrey was able to shift his last leg inside so she could shut the door. The moment she'd climbed into the driver's seat, she took the hand that Nathan was tentatively holding in her direction and placed it on her forearm so he'd know where she was while she could still drive.

The trip was tense and quiet. Audrey was mentally trying not to count down how much time had passed, and especially not to speculate as to how much they might have left. Nathan was sitting stiffly in the seat beside her, his grip tight on her arm, his expression stony and his sightless eyes anxious. Every short glance she shot at him made her chest feel like it was collapsing again.

As Audrey stopped the truck in the car park of Haven Regional, she was pretty certain that she'd seen enough of the place in the last week to last her a lifetime. It was hard to get Nathan to let go of her arm so she could get out of the truck, until he asked if they'd gotten wherever they were going and she affirmed. Climbing out of the truck turned out to be a lot easier for Nathan than getting in had been, and in just a few moments they were walking toward the hospital doors.

Once inside, Audrey approached the nurses' station and cleared her throat to get the young nurses' attention. The woman looked up and then her brow knitted in surprise and confusion. Audrey figured they must look a sight, her in her tank top and sidearm, holding hands with a pyjama-clad and very clearly disoriented Nathan while his other hand was curled around her bicep. To her credit, the nurse recovered well.

"Can I help you officers?" she asked curiously.

"We need a file from you," Audrey answered hastily. "I've been told Nurse Angelina Waters was working a rotation when she died. Do you have a copy of what floors she was working on that rotation?"

"That'll help find out who killed her, right?" the nurse asked and her eyes were plaintive and hopeful. Audrey could tell immediately that she must have known Nurse Waters well, and she nodded. "I'll have to check with my supervisor first, but I'm sure we can get that for you. If you'll just wait here, I'll be right back."

Audrey tossed a thank you after the nurse's retreating back and then shifted her weight to the other leg, leaning slightly into the warmth coming from Nathan's body beside her. His eyes were once again looking around hopefully, trying to find something, anything, but he must have felt her move because his head swivelled in her direction and his hand gripped hers tighter.

"Parker?" he asked tentatively and she squeezed his fingers to let him know she was listening. "I really am sorry. About not telling you about this." To signify what he meant, he twisted his hand until his long fingers were threaded in between hers. It surprised Audrey just how much she liked the feel of it, but those were thoughts for other times. "And that you had to find out like this. It wasn't –" He trailed off, looking at a loss for words, and then frowned. "It was – It –"

He clamped his eyes shut and shook his head sharply, and Audrey felt his weight pull at her arm as he staggered slightly to the side. "Nathan?" she asked nervously, grabbing his shoulder with her free hand to steady him. He was leaning hard to one side and his brow was furrowed deeply, and he opened and closed his mouth twice before forming sound.

"Parr-er," he slurred, his eyes still pressed closed. "Somefing's wrong. I can'd… Brain feels weird… I can'd fink…" He stumbled further to the right and Audrey leapt forward to stop him from falling. " 'Dree? I – 'dree?"

"I'm here, Nathan," she said quietly and then shouted, "Help! I need help here." Not a split second later, Nathan's full weight slumped into her and Audrey's knees buckled under her, taking them both to the floor. "Don't you dare, Nathan," she growled out, flattening a palm against his cheek. His eyes had partially opened but they weren't moving, and his breathing was shallow. "Don't you dare die on me, Wuornos!"

There were doctors and nurses all around them now, and they hauled Nathan's body up onto a stretcher. Audrey couldn't focus on all of the medical jargon floating around her, all she could pay attention to was the hand still clamped in hers. Nathan's hand. She couldn't lose him now.

"Ma'am, you're gonna need to let go." A doctor was trying to pry Nathan's hand away from hers and Audrey scowled at him. She hadn't even realized she'd been jogging along with the stretcher as it moved down a hall. "We need to get him into the ER. Now. You've got to let go." With a tremendous tug, he jerked her hand from Nathan's and Audrey stopped short, watching the group disappear through a set of double doors with Nathan hidden somewhere in the middle.

Staring at her empty hand, Audrey felt a blind panic fill her in a way she'd never felt before. Not in being sent to a new foster home as a child or in her first dangerous situation after Quantico or even in any of the times she'd come face-to-face with Troubles. Because Nathan had become her constant, the one steady thing in this world of chaos that she had embroiled herself in, and she was losing him.

She slid down the wall to sit on the cold tile floor and wrapped her arms around the legs she'd drawn up to her chest, and for the first time since she was a teenager she just completely let go and cried.


	15. Epiphany

At some point her eyes ran dry and her sobs choked down into weak hiccoughs. She was sitting in a sort of daze, still crouched down on the floor in the wide hospital hallway without the inclination to move. She didn't have any idea how much time had passed or what was going on around her. She only stirred back to reality when someone knelt at her side and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Ma'am?" Audrey blinked slowly, her eyes feeling coarse and gritty, and looked up at the face. He was an older man, flecks of grey in his brown hair, and his eyes were compassionate. "You're Agent Parker, right? My name is Travis Martin."

It took a minute before Audrey realized that she recognized the man's face. He was the doctor that had pulled Nathan's hand out of hers. "Nathan, is he?"

"He's stable," the doctor assured her quickly, the hand on her shoulder tightening supportively.

"What happened?" Audrey asked. Now that she was faced with information, the fog in her head was clearing away and she was reverting back into cop mode.

The doctor grimaced for a moment, and then resumed his professional expression. "It was a stroke," he said. "A haemorrhagic stroke, meaning there was a blood clot in his brain. Judging by the loss of motor skills and the ability to speak, it was most likely located near the brain stem. Because of its location, it was too dangerous to operate and relieve the pressure, but we managed to stabilize him. However, his situation is still very dangerous."

"Can I see him?" Audrey asked hopefully.

At this Dr. Martin stood up and offered a hand down to her, which she accepted. "He's in ICU and normally you wouldn't be allowed in, because you're not family," he said.

"Please, I'm working his case," Audrey said quickly. "We were working a double homicide and he was targeted by the killer. I need to see him to continue our investigation."

Dr. Martin nodded. "I understand, Agent Parker, I wasn't going to stop you," he said but his voice had taken on a gentle tone again that made Audrey's nerves prickle. "But I have to tell you, he won't be able to help you." When Audrey frowned, he took a deep breath and said, "I'm afraid he's comatose. The pressure on his brain is what forced him to lose consciousness in the first place, and even though he's stabilized, he hasn't regained consciousness yet."

Audrey placed a hand back against the wall to steady herself, but beyond that she showed no obvious signs of what she'd just been told. Nathan was in a coma. Yesterday he'd lost his hearing, this morning his sight, and now, just hours later, he'd lost consciousness. He was deteriorating so quickly now, she couldn't help but wonder what next? What did he have left to lose?

"I want to see him," Audrey said firmly. Dr. Martin nodded and gestured for her to follow him. He led her to the elevators and when it stopped on another floor he led them down several long corridors until they reached a set of sealed off double doors. With a nod to the nurse behind the glass, the doors opened and he steered her to the third door on the right.

The room looked just like any other hospital room; stark white, with a standard metal bed frame and lots of beeping computers positioned around the headboard. Nathan's long body was tucked beneath the plain blue blanket, several wires attached to his bare chest with another few stuck to his forehead and a thin rubbery tube running beneath his nose. Under the harsh light, the shadows on his face looked deeper and he looked to have aged a decade since the last time she'd seen him. His only movements were the faint rise and fall of his chest. If she hadn't known better she might have thought him asleep. But she did know better; this was the sort of sleep he might not wake up from.

"If you need anything, just call," the doctor said in a quiet voice – Audrey recognized it as the sort of voice one used on a death bed and she hated him for it. "I've got to call his father and get the rest of the affairs sorted, but I'll be back shortly." With that he patted her shoulder one last time and then left the room. Audrey hardly noticed.

"Oh God, Nathan," she breathed and she walked to the edge of the bed as cautiously as if she were walking over ice. Like at any moment the ground would slip out from beneath her, even though she was certain it already had. She perched herself on the plastic chair that had been set beside the bed and reached up to touch his hand lightly. Although she'd only discovered it an hour or so ago, she knew that under normal circumstances he would have felt it. Reacted to it. This time he simply slept on.

She was lost. She didn't really know what to do anymore. Rationally, she should be out, hunting down the killer and trying to make them reverse whatever they'd done to Nathan. But she didn't know who it was and she wasn't any closer to having some stroke of brilliance that would solve everything. Now, with Nathan balanced so closely on the edge, she didn't dare leave him. Every time she had left him over the last few days, he'd gotten worse. She was afraid if she left again, this time he wouldn't be there when she got back.

Sometime later, her phone rang and Audrey answered it on autopilot. "Hey Audrey, it's me," Duke said through the phone. "Sorry but I've been over this list like three times now and I'm not finding anything. Did you find anything out?"

"No," she said distractedly. "Nathan got worse."

"Worse how?" Duke asked and she could hear a note of anxiousness in his voice.

"He's in a coma," Audrey explained. From the other end of the line she could hear a stunned silence and then Duke breathed out a quiet oath.

"I'll be there in just a bit, 'kay?" he said. Audrey tried to argue but he just talked over her. "No offence Audrey, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be alone right now. You're a crazy chick with a gun. Bad combo. Besides, Nathan's dog won't leave me alone. She's been glued to my side since you guys left and I'm pretty sure my pants with be forever drool stained." Without giving her another chance to argue with him, he hung up.

Audrey simply sighed, placed the phone back in her pocket, and went back to her steadfast holding of Nathan's hand. She had wrapped both of her hands around his, hoping that somewhere deep in his subconscious he would be able to feel it and know that he wasn't alone.

Fifteen minutes later Dr. Martin returned and said, "Agent Parker, there's a man waiting for you outside the ICU. He wants to talk with you." Audrey hesitated, looking down at Nathan and their intertwined hands. The doctor smiled sympathetically. "We're going to run a few neurological tests on him, if you could just step out," he said. "And Chief Wuornos should be here any minute. He won't be left alone, I promise."

For a moment Audrey wanted to dispute that fact with him; after all she was the only person that Nathan would know was here. That was provided he even did know that she was there. Instead she just nodded and stood up, squeezing Nathan's hand one last time before walking past the doctor and out into the main hall. Outside the ICU doors, Duke was leaning against a wall with his arms folded over his chest, looking deep in thought. He glanced up when she walked out.

"How is he?" he asked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. "They said I can't go back there and they wouldn't say much."

"He had a stroke," Audrey explained in a toneless voice. She found that the less she thought about it, the less it terrified her. "He's been unconscious ever since. They haven't said what his chances are of coming out of it."

"You think it's more to do with this sand business?" Duke pressed.

"It's got to be," she said with a small shrug. "I mean I don't know all about his medical history, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't exactly a high risk for having a stroke at thirty-two." Duke nodded in understanding and slouched back against the wall again. "I don't know what to do anymore," she admitted wearily, not daring to meet the smuggler's dark eyes but instead staring at the bleached tile floor. "I've run out of ideas and I really don't think we have much more time for brainstorming."

"We'll figure something out, Audrey," Duke said firmly. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and for once she didn't brush off his physical contact. "You know Nathan, he's an annoyingly stubborn jackass. He won't be going anywhere any time soon. Especially not when he's got you to come back to." At this Audrey glanced up at Duke and his expression was resigned. "You two, you've got something different between you, don't you?"

"I don't know," Audrey said truthfully. "I'm not even thinking about that right now. I just – I think right now I just want to make sure he doesn't die first."

"Fair enough," Duke agreed. "Alright, but don't think this means I'm giving up on you, Agent Officer Parker. After all, you still owe me a dinner date." It felt like it had been ages since she'd done it when she cracked a small smile at his teasing.

They simply stood there in a companionable silence for several minutes. After a while Chief Wuornos passed them, acknowledging them only with a shallow nod before continuing on through the ICU doors. As much as Audrey wanted to go back to Nathan's side, she knew she should give the Chief some time to be alone with his son. They were family, after all, whether they acted like it or not.

"Excuse me, Agent Parker?" Audrey looked away from the double doors as they swung shut behind the Chief and saw that the nurse from the front desk was standing in front of her. "I, uh, I was just wondering about Detective Wuornos. It was a stroke, wasn't it?"

Audrey grimaced but nodded, and the young nurse hung her head for a moment.

"I thought so," she said quietly. "That's the second one we've had today. There's a boy who went the same way early this morning. He's still comatose in the ICU, the poor thing. Just seventeen years old. It's the strangest thing."

At this Audrey straightened up attentively, her mind immediately changing gears. "You say there's another person with the same condition?" she asked.

"Yeah, Marcus Cates," the nurse responded. "No one is really sure what's wrong with him though. They figure it must be from the blood clot pressing on his brain stem and ruining his sensory control, but they don't know what to do about it yet."

"I know that name," Duke said abruptly. "Marcus Cates. It was on that list from the art store. I saw it like four times."

"That doesn't make sense," Audrey said, shaking her head. "If he was the one with the sand, how come he's in a coma now? And how's he connected to the others?" Duke shrugged and muttered something that sounded like, "you're the detective." Ignoring him, Audrey turned back to the nurse. "Can I see him? This Marcus kid?"

The nurse bit her lip hesitantly but then nodded. "This way," she said and led them back into the ICU, even as the older nurse at the entrance gave them a suspicious look. Their nurse took them far down the hall and then stopped and poked her head into a room. When she stepped back out into the hall she looked up at Audrey and said, "His parents are in there with him, perhaps they can help you. But please, be careful. You're not really supposed to be in here at all."

"Thank you," Audrey said sincerely to the nurse and then made to step past her, but the nurse caught her arm.

"Oh and this is for you," she said, pulling a thin manila folder from her clipboard and pressing it into Audrey's hand. "It's Angie's rotation list. But, uh, don't tell my supervisor where you got it from, would you?" With that she gave a weak smile, nodded and left. Audrey watched her go for a moment, and then stepped into the hospital room. It looked almost exactly like the one Nathan was in, only the bed held a lanky, freckled teenage boy with strawberry-blonde hair, and there were two chairs beside his bed filled by a tall, stocky man and a wispy looking woman. They both looked up when Audrey walked in.

"I'm sorry to bother you," she said quickly, "but I'm Agent Audrey Parker with the FBI, and I'm working with the Haven PD on a case that we believe might involve your son. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."

"Involving our son?" the man asked incredulously, his eyes narrowing. Beside him his wife gave a shuddery sob. "Can't you see him? He's sick. How could he be involved with any of your cases?"

"We think that his illness might be connected to a string of similar illnesses that have occurred in town over the last few days," Audrey explained carefully. "It's an unusual illness, isn't it? One the doctors can't really explain. It started out simple, like a head cold, and then turned into an inner ear problem. But it got worse. He started feeling tired and stiff and heavy, and then he lost his sight. And then the stroke; a healthy young boy having a stroke."

"How do you know all of that?" the man asked suspiciously.

"Because it's the same thing that's happened to others and that's what we're trying to get to the bottom of," Audrey said. She could see a shift in the man's eyes, something starting to slide more towards trust, but he was still scowling.

"So you think what happened to Marcus, you think it's some sort of – virus that someone's spreading around?" Mr. Cates asked. "Like some sort of cheap bio-terrorism?"

"Something like that," Audrey agreed, because she couldn't really come up with a better explanation than that. If the Cates weren't locals, people who'd lived here long enough to have been through it before, she really didn't want to try and explain the Troubles to them. She didn't have time for that anyway. "During our case, we found your son's name on a list of records from Mary's Art Supplies, for having bought a deal of white decorative sand recently. Do you know anything about that?"

"Sand? Probably gets it for one of our neighbours, this old guy who lives around the corner," Mr. Cates said, sitting up straighter. "He's an artist, like a sculptor or something, and Marcus had been taking lessons from him on weekends. Marcus likes sculpting. He's really good at it too. So in return for lessons, Marcus does a lot of chores for him; helps him clean up the workshop, runs errands for him, picks up his supplies. Stuff like that."

"This neighbour, do you know his name?" Audrey asked, a strange tingling going up her spine.

"It's foreign or something," Mr. Cates said slowly, his forehead beetling in concentration. "Marcus always just calls him Mr. D."

Something cold and heavy dropped into Audrey's stomach. "Demarcio."

"Yeah, that's it," Mr. Cates agreed enthusiastically but Audrey wasn't listening anymore. She flipped open the folder that the nurse had given her and her eyes panned up the list, searching for one particular name. And there it was, listed directly above 'Haven Regional – Cancer Ward 3.'

Sunnyside Haven Hospice Centre

Heart hammering, Audrey looked up. "I know who did it."


	16. Through the Sandglass

The streets were a blur as Audrey floored the gas pedal of the rusty old Bronco. Above her the sirens wailed and painted the area around her in flashes of red and blue lights. Duke was in the seat beside her, because he'd insisted on coming along and she hadn't wanted to waste the time arguing with him, and he had a white-knuckled grip on the door handle. Adrenaline was pumping through Audrey's veins and she could hear her heart beating in her ears. This was it.

The brakes whined as Audrey skidded to a hard stop in the wide drive outside the Sunnyside Haven Hospice Centre. It looked colder and less welcoming than she remembered, the lawns vacant with the bleak weather and the windows curtained against the autumn chill that had set in early this year. Audrey hurled herself out of the cab of the truck, slamming the door shut behind her in the haste. As she jogged around the truck, Duke caught up with her and fell into step.

"What're we gonna do?" he asked.

Audrey didn't answer, not knowing exactly what she was going to do. All she knew was that she needed to get to this man and make him fix things, fix Nathan, no matter what she had to do to make it happen. Duke seemed to read her mind because he made a loud exasperated noise. "No plan. Of course. So same as usual then." And from there his incredulous complaints dissolved into muttering.

They burst through the hospice centre doors, most likely startling anyone that might have been in the lobby, not that they stopped to check. Duke tailed Audrey as she all but sprinted down the wide hall to the door she'd entered just days ago. In one fluid motion she drew her sidearm, ushered Duke behind her, and opened the door.

"Hands in the air," she shouted, wheeling around the doorframe and then coming to an abrupt stop. "No."

The room was empty. The bed was neatly made, the pictures had been taken off the walls, the medical equipment sat silently in the corners, and, worst of all, the armchair was vacant. "No," Audrey said again, lowering her sidearm and looking around frantically. "Where are they?"

"Agent Parker!" Ginger the black-haired hospice nurse came into the room, panting heavily and looking alarmed. "Agent Parker, what is going on here?"

"Where are they?" Audrey asked, gesturing behind her to the empty room. Ginger seemed much more focused on the 9mm in Audrey's hand.

"They're gone," Ginger said, her wide eyes still tracking the progress of the gun. "She's getting better; it's like some kind of miracle. Calvin took her home last night."

"The address," Audrey demanded. "I need the address. Where are they at?"

"What is all of this about?" Ginger asked, her voice slipping up an octave in her fear. "What's going on?"

"Calvin Demarcio, I need his address," Audrey said sharply. She could feel the countdown, the way that time was slipping away from them, and she didn't want to waste any more of it.

"Alright, okay," Ginger said, nervously eyeing Audrey's gun and then turning around. "I'll check my files." Audrey and Duke followed her back to the main desk, ignoring the gathering that was bustling around them in morbid curiosity. Ginger rifled through a large filing cabinet, shooting sporadic glances over her shoulder at them and tsking under her breath. Audrey tapped a fingernail against the barrel of her sidearm impatiently.

"Here it is," Ginger announced, pulling out a stack of paperwork and consulting it. "Calvin's address is 14 Mariner Avenue."

"Let's go," Audrey said to Duke quickly and then without another word she charged straight back out of the building. She'd thank Ginger for her help when this was all over, but at the moment there were much more pressing matters than things like manners. Not when Nathan's life was on the line.

She hardly even waited long enough for Duke to slam the truck door closed behind him before she gunned the engine and they were off again. "Audrey, you're not going to just put a bullet in this guy's brain when we get there, are you?" Duke asked anxiously from the passenger seat, grunting as her sharp turn tossed him against the door.

"Of course not," Audrey answered curtly but it wasn't an entirely honest answer; she had no idea what she was going to do, but if her only option was to shoot Calvin Demarcio, she was scared to admit even to herself that she would most likely do it without a second's hesitation. She didn't have to look to know that Duke didn't exactly believe her either.

Mariner Avenue was a narrow residential road near the coastline, with a great view of the ocean and the lighthouse in the distance. All of the great scenic aspects were lost on Audrey as she counted house numbers and then jerked the Bronco into the front drive of a squat house with a brass 14 tacked to the front porch railing. There was an old luxury car parked in the drive and Audrey let out a breath of relief that she hadn't realized she was holding; at least she knew Calvin hadn't fled the state or something.

"Stay back," Audrey hissed to Duke as they jumped out of the truck and headed for the porch. "Try to stay out of the way and don't do anything unless I tell you."

"Why?" Duke asked indignantly.

"Because I'm the one with the gun," Audrey replied, clicking off the safety and tightening her grip. Duke didn't say anything after that, but he did fall into place behind her as she reached for the door handle. It was unlocked, and she cautiously opened the door to peer inside.

The living room was tiny and just shy of being cramped, with mismatched floral printed armchairs and a sofa that all looked as though they must have been upholstered sometime during the nineteen-fifties. Photo frames dotted the walls, all holding faded sepia tone or black-and-white photographs, and there were a few artistically carved wooden statues and knick-knacks placed on shelves or resting on the end tables. Still, despite its simple appearance, there was something about the deceptive comfort that made the hairs on the back of Audrey's neck stand on end. Or perhaps that was just because she still had very little idea about what she'd be facing inside that cosy house.

Gesturing over her shoulder for Duke to stay quiet, to which he replied by rolling his eyes and giving her a look that all too plainly said 'duh,' Audrey slipped into the living room. There was only one way leading out of it, a narrow hallway that curved immediately and blocked their view of the next room. Audrey stepped carefully, trying to make as little sound as possible, to the hallway entrance and looked down. It was nothing more than a short, wood-panelled hall that ended in yet another abrupt turn that stopped her from seeing anything more. She couldn't help but wonder if this house had been built with the intent to look like a maze or if the architect was just an idiot.

Down the hall and then around the corner, and Audrey froze with a gasp. The next room was large, much larger than the entry room had been, and wide open. A small dining table set with two chairs up against the nearest wall was the only furniture, but that wasn't what had stunned Audrey. The wall facing them was comprised entirely of shelves, and the shelves were lined with dozens upon dozens of sandglasses. There had to be at least a hundred of them and no two sandglasses looked the same.

"Whoa," Duke breathed from behind her. "Someone needs a new hobby." Audrey distractedly nodded her agreement and crossed the room to examine the glasses. They came in all sizes and different styles of wood; some had coloured glass while others had bulbs that were wider or narrower; each had small designs carved into the wood around the rims. There was only one thing that every single sandglass had in common: each was filled with fine, snowy white sand.

"This is it," Audrey said, gingerly tracing a finger down the bulb of one of the glasses. "This is how he's doing it. The sand… it's got to be."

"So you think these sandglasses, that's how he's been killing people?" Duke asked and she could hear the scepticism.

Audrey didn't answer, her eyes catching onto something else peculiar about the glasses. "Duke, look at this," she whispered, staring at where her finger was resting against the bulb. There was a small hillock of sand in the bottom bulb, and a shallow pool of it in the top, but no sand was falling through the funnel. As she moved on to examine others, she noticed that they all were the same way; there were varying amounts of sand in each of them, some with a great deal in the bottom bulb and some with hardly any at all, but the sand didn't move.

"They're all broken," Duke said, tapping one of the sandglasses with his fingertip experimentally and furrowing his brow when nothing happened. "It's like they're all frozen or something." Audrey brushed her fingers over a dark wooded one, following the sweeping spirals etched into it. "Except these ones."

"What?" Audrey asked, spinning around to see what he meant. He was kneeling to look at the sandglasses on the lowest row of shelves and Audrey dropped down to her knees beside him. There, in the middle of the row, were two sandglasses with the sand trickling steadily from the top bulb onto the mounds below. One of the sandglasses was smaller, with a glossy cherry wood finish and the outer beams holding it together were shaped in wide, spiralling curves. The other was built in a standard, straight-lined style, all smooth contours and steady designs. It was several inches taller than the first, and the wood was soft and brightly coloured, sharply contrasted by the dark stain that emphasized the grain and knots of the wood. And there was something strikingly familiar about the bluish hue of the glass on the bulbs, fading into a light, transparent grey near the funnel.

"It's Nathan," Audrey said breathlessly, her fingertips hovering millimetres away from the wood. "This glass, it's Nathan. I can feel it."

"This is insane," Duke said but without a trace of disbelief in his voice.

"What are you doing here?" Audrey and Duke both straightened up, spinning on their heels to face the voice. Calvin Demarcio was standing in a doorway to their right, his knuckles white as he gripped his cane and his eyes narrowed angrily. "What are you doing in my house? Get out of here."

"Calvin, you've got to stop what you're doing," Audrey said firmly, raising her gun and levelling it with the old man's chest.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Calvin replied, speaking in a cool, emotionless voice and taking up a defensive posture.

"People are dying," Audrey said. "People have already died. Good people. You can't keep doing this; you've got to fix this."

"Good people," Calvin echoed incredulously. "Good people don't tell you to kill your mother. Good people don't tell you to just sit by and watch the only person you've ever loved die a horrible death. Not when you have the power to fix it."

"The sandglasses," Audrey said and the old man smiled, a smile so calm and normal that it was completely at odds with the situation. "That's how you do it, isn't it?"

"I always was a great sculptor," Calvin said knowingly. "I was good at taking things and making them take the shape that I wanted them to. Mother, she said I was gifted. An artistic prodigy. I've made thousands of things, but my favourite things to make were always sandglasses. Such simple little things, but they control time. When it's slipping away from you, you just flip it over and your time has begun anew. Fascinating, isn't it?

"But your sandglasses, they aren't normal," Audrey said. She needed to get the information from him, to find out how the sandglasses worked so she could save Nathan. Already the sand left in the top bulb of his glass was dwindling and she wasn't sure how much longer she had before it would be gone. She didn't want to think about what would happen then.

"I first found it out when I was eleven," Calvin continued conversationally. It was completely unnerving how calm and rational he was being about this as he sucked the life out of people. "It was only Mother and I by then, my father had died in the war when I was much younger. I made a sandglass, and there's this girl at school that I fancied, so I decorated it with things she liked. I brought it home, and turned it over. The sand, it ran so slowly. The next day, I felt great, like I was on top of the world, but the girl I fancied wasn't at school. She died the next day of a brain haemorrhage and no one could explain how it happened.

"It took me a while to figure out the connection between her and the sandglass, but I experimented with it a bit and got it down. My sandglasses, they don't just measure time, they control a person's time. When I make a sandglass, I can run their time out of their bodies and into mine. And with a little work, I figured out how to move that time into anyone that I want."

"And that's how you make your mother better," Audrey concluded in awe. "She's running out of time, so you steal it from other people to keep her alive a while longer. But these glasses, they're all frozen. They aren't giving her more time anymore, are they?"

"I can only take life from people while it's still in them," Calvin explained. "When they die, the sand stops. It's so hard to make it work. When people feel their lives leaving them, they panic and do stupid things to get themselves killed."

"Jeffrey Halter," Audrey said, putting the pieces together in her mind. "He really did just stumble in front of that car. He must have been walking to work and lost his sight. That's why he never saw the car coming. And Nurse Waters, she must have woken up without hers and then fallen down the stairs. That's why her bedroom was trashed; she couldn't see what she was doing."

"If they had only had the sense to stay still, to stay out of danger, it could have given her just a few more years," Calvin said mournfully. "I needed to find someone who could really help her, someone with a real strength of spirit that could sustain her for years. That's why I chose you." Audrey's eyes widened and she felt Duke move closer to her from behind, a protective hand on her back. "That day when you came to the Centre, I thought it must have been fate. The great Lucy Ripley coming to me in my hour of need. But it didn't work. I tried to make a sandglass for you, but it wouldn't work. The images, the power, it always slipped from my grasp. So I settled for your partner, for Garland's boy."

The mention of Nathan made molten heat boil in Audrey's stomach and she stiffened, her eyes narrowing as she sighted the gun to the old man's heart. "You're killing people," Audrey said coldly. "You are taking people's lives, Calvin, and that makes you a murderer."

"Taking lives to sustain another," Calvin said, his voice taking on a hint of pleading, as though begging her to understand. "My mother, she is everything to me. What kind of son would I be to stand by and let her die when I have the power to keep her clock running? That would be like murdering my own mother. You can't ask me to do that."

"Innocent people are dying to keep her alive," Audrey shouted.

"They aren't innocent, none of them are," Calvin retorted fiercely. "Not that cruel insurance man, the one without compassion or hope. He lived alone, he never knew love, never knew family. He couldn't possibly understand. He never did. And the nurse, the one who told me that it I was making my mother suffer. And Garland's boy, he was the same. He lived a cruel life, cursed the way he was. We all knew he was a cursed one from birth, we all know what he really was. Killing him was an act of mercy, to save him and to save us all from his fate."

"What about Marcus?" Audrey yelled angrily, her heart hammering so hard in her ears that she was struggling to hear what he was saying. How dare he say so many horrible things about Nathan? Kind, compassionate Nathan who understood her when no one else did and who stood by her side through everything. But most frightening of all, she hated the way that he spoke of Nathan in the past tense. "What about Marcus Cates? What did he do wrong?"

For the briefest moment, the determination on Calvin's face flickered. "It was a necessary sacrifice," he said resolutely but some of the passion had left his voice.

"He's a child," Audrey said. "He's just a kid and he looks up to you. He worships you and loves you, and you are killing him."

"To save her," Calvin screamed. "It's all to save her. I have to do it."

"Cal, what's going on here?" Audrey broke her staring contest with Calvin as they both looked back at the door that he'd come in through. The withered old woman from the Centre was standing in the doorframe in a white nightgown, but she looked younger and fresher than Audrey remembered. The wrinkles in her face had shrunk, and there was light and life in her eyes as she looked around the room with curiosity and alarm.

"It's nothing, Mother, go back to bed," Calvin said gently. "You need your rest; you're not all better yet."

"What is this?" Lillian Demarcio asked, staring at Audrey with wide grey eyes.

"Mrs. Demarcio, I know this will sound insane, but your son is using these sandglasses to drain the life out of people and feed it back into you," Audrey said in a rush. "There are two people dying in the hospital at this very moment. That's how you're getting better."

"That's ridiculous," Lillian said. "It's a new medication, something they gave me at the Centre, that's why I'm better. Cal told me so. Right, Cal?"

"Of course, Mother," Calvin said. "This woman is mad."

"Please, Mrs. Demarcio, you have to understand," Audrey said desperately. "My partner is dying, and so is a young boy that took lessons from your son. Calvin has a special ability but he is using it for the wrong reasons."

"That isn't true," Lillian said firmly. "My Cal, he would never hurt people. I can solve this, easily. A mother can always see the truth. Calvin, look me in the eye and tell me it's not the truth."

"Mother, you're being ridiculous," Calvin said never taking his eyes off of Audrey. "This woman won't just take your word."

"I will," Audrey said abruptly and Calvin glared at her in horror. "If your mother tells me you're telling the truth, then I'll believe it."

"See, she understands," Lillian said. "So do it Cal, look at me and tell me the truth."

Calvin looked torn as he kept his gaze levelled at Audrey for several long seconds, and then he slowly turned to look at his mother. "I'm not doing it," he said in a flat voice.

Lillian scrutinized him, something suspicious in the lines of her eyes. "Tell me, Calvin; tell me that you're not hurting people," she said and it almost sounded like she was pleading with him. "Tell me it's not true."

Calvin's expression crumbled. "It's all for you, Mother," he said breathlessly. "I'm doing it for you. To make you better. I can't lose you, Mom, I just can't do it. Not after everything you've done for me. I just wanted to make you better, so we could be happy again."

"Calvin!" Lillian covered her heart with a hand, looking horrified. "Calvin, this can't be true. You told me that the ability never came back after Lucy went away. You told me you would never hurt anyone again, not after what happened to Emily. How could you?"

"To save you!" Calvin yelled, tears on his cheeks as he stared at her imploringly. "I did it for you, Mother. You told me that you wanted us to have more time together, that you wanted us to be a family again."

"Not like this," Lillian said, shaking her head. "Never like this, Cal."

"Mother, please!" Calvin shouted so loudly that his voice cracked, but Lillian simply shook her head and turned away, disappearing back into the other room. Calvin wheeled on Audrey, his face flushed and his eyes burning. "This is your fault!" he shrieked. "This is all your fault. If you hadn't come, we would've been happy. She would've understood. This is your fault!"

"Audrey!" Duke yelled from somewhere off to the right and Audrey turned to look. A split second later Calvin's cane connected with the side of her head and she crumpled. Her grip went slack as she hit the floor and she rolled to soften the impact, clambering unsteadily back to her feet several feet away. As she regained her bearings, she realized that her sidearm had fallen at Calvin's feet and he had grabbed it, turning to point it at her.

"No!" Duke had shouted again, his voice nearly drowned in the clap of the gunshot. He collided with Calvin at the same moment that the bullet struck Audrey, and she buckled backwards into the wall while they fell against the shelves holding the sandglasses.

"NO!" This time it was Audrey who'd screamed it, because through the haze in her vision she watched as Nathan's sandglass teetered ominously. Then, as though in slow motion, it revolved three times before hitting the floor and shattering in an explosion of glass and wood splinters, and as the sand spread across the carpet it turned blood red.


	17. Over

Dr. Travis Martin had seen a lot of strange things during his life. Having been a doctor for eighteen years at the Haven Regional Hospital, it was impossible to have remained in the realm of normality for long. A lot of the shock factor had worn off by now, to the point where he didn't blink when a young boy came in with gills on his neck or a woman came in breathing ice. Things had only gotten crazier when he'd switched from the Emergency Room to the Intensive Care Unit. He had learned that the best way to remain efficient – and sane – was to simply treat all of the unusual things that happened in Haven, Maine as if they were normal medical cases.

Of course every once in a while something came along that completely threw him for a loop, and today was just one of those days.

He was making his mid-afternoon rounds of the ICU, casually checking on each of his patients. It was a humbling experience every day, seeing the work he'd done and how it was helping people to recover, and then in the very next room seeing someone who he had done everything he could for but was still losing the battle. He paused in a doorway to check on one of the newest admittances. Marcus Cates, only seventeen years old and looking very much like he wouldn't live to become eighteen. That was another one of those cases where he had done everything he could think of to no avail. It looked like Haven's Troubles might claim another win over science.

With a heavy sigh, he turned to walk away from the room and then froze at the distant sound of a flat line. Seconds later his pager beeped on his waistband and he jumped into the rush that was heading for the room number on the page. He grimaced, because he knew exactly who was in that room.

Pushing his way between two nurses to take charge of the room, Travis felt his stomach lurch at the sight of the man in the hospital bed, a man that had only come in a few hours prior. He knew Nathan Wuornos from outside the hospital. Everyone who had lived in Haven for a few years at least knew of him, and Travis had only been a few years older than him when they'd been in school so he clearly remembered the play-yard stories that had gone around about the strange boy who felt nothing. He had struck up a tentative friendship with him in their early adulthood, when both had just come back to Haven after college and while they hardly talked anymore, he still respected the man.

He also breathed out silent thanks that the Chief had left a while ago. He didn't think he could do his job right with that hawk of a man scowling at him, and he didn't want to imagine his own fate if a screw-up killed the Chief's son.

"He's got oedema," Travis shouted to the room in general, removing his stethoscope from Wuornos' slightly seizing chest. "There's definitely build-up in his lungs, we've got to clear it." As the nurses on either side of him set to work on that, he turned his attention to the scans from the other machines. His blood pressure had fallen drastically and Travis knew what that meant. "The clot is growing, we've got to relieve the pressure," he barked.

"Trav, it's in the stem," a younger resident said with wide eyes. "That could kill him."

"And if we don't do it then it definitely will," Travis replied sharply. The younger doctor blanched but nodded and started assembling the tools. Travis' attention was pulled back when one of the nurses gasped. He turned to check on them and realized immediately what had startled her. They had forced a breathing tube into Wuornos' throat, and as the exhale pumped back out of his body it brought with it a cloud of gritty material. "What on earth–?"

He momentarily detached the breathing tube to run his finger over the inside and when he pulled it back the gritty material clung to his glove. It was damp and clumped, but he was almost ninety-nine percent sure that it was sand. "Just keep going," Travis ordered the nurses. "Whatever this is in his lungs, it's still not air and that's what we need to make sure is getting there."

The other doctor had returned with the proper tools and Travis readied for what he needed to do. He had others help to move Wuornos onto his side, so he could get access to the back of his skull. With a narrow incision tool he pressed the tip to the base of the skull and took a steadying breath. Of all the dangerous things he'd been forced to do to save lives in his career, this one was possibly one of the worst. Cutting in millimetres from a person's brain stem... Travis took another deep breath and then gritted his teeth. No time to waste.

The tool broke through the flesh and tissues almost frightfully easily. It momentarily tapped against the bone at the base of the skull, but he shifted his angle to avoid any serious areas and pressed on. The moment he pulled the blade back out, a steady trickling of rust-coloured dust began falling from the incision and everyone around the bed took a hasty step backwards in alarm.

"What the hell?" the resident gasped out, pale and terrified. "Is that – dirt?"

Travis recovered a half second later and shook himself out of his shock. "It's putting pressure on his brain and we need to get it out of him," he said and then reached for the suction tube. Without a moment to second-guess his thoughts, he pushed the tube into the incision and turned it on. The machine made a horrible chugging noise as it started up and then the grainy flow began whirling down the tube.

"He's still not stabilizing," the older of the two nurses said in clipped tones, still dutifully sustaining the breathing compressions. Travis looked up at the heart monitor and grimaced. His heart beat was still erratic and too shallow to hold up for long. If he didn't stabilize in the next minute they'd have to use the defibrillator.

"And Trav, this, uh, well it's getting thicker back here," the resident said uncertainly and Travis looked down at the tube. The sand was coming out heavier and faster, and the reddish tint was darker. He had no idea what that meant exactly, but he could only hope that it was a good thing.

"Just keep up what we're doing," Travis said, trying to sound confident in what he was saying, at least confident enough to make the others believe that he knew what they were up against. "Let's ball for a perfect game, huh? I don't want to lose a man today."

One of the nurses hastily crossed herself, and for a moment Travis was tempted to copy her. He wasn't a religious man, but sometimes when facing the Troubles, it helped to have faith in something. For many people it seemed to have become that woman, the FBI agent that was hanging around town who the older people all said had powers beyond anything in Haven. Inwardly, as Travis adjusted the suction tube in the back of Wuornos' head, he wondered if she could do something to make this better.

. . . . .

"No." Audrey squeezed her eyes shut, trying to regulate her breathing and compartmentalize. There was a searing pain in her left collarbone but she could deal with that later. For now she had to focus on the more important things.

"Audrey?" She prised her eyes open in time to see a long body untangle itself from the heap on the floor beneath the shelves, and a moment later Duke's face had filled her vision. "Jesus, Audrey, you're bleeding bad."

"So are you," Audrey replied. The entire right side of Duke's face was striped with blood, and she could see several scattered gashes peppering his skin, some deeper than others. She grimaced as she straightened up, forcing herself into a better sitting position and sending spears of pain through her shoulder and neck. "The sandglass, it broke."

Duke looked over his shoulder at the mess of shattered glass that covered the floor and cringed. "Nathan's?" he asked, even as his eyes fell on the red stain in the carpet and he let out a whispered curse.

There was a low groan and Calvin Demarcio shifted. He was gasping and wheezing as he pulled himself into a sitting position. Audrey stared at his face in awe. Even though his cheeks were flushed in anger and exertion, the rest of his face had blanched to a sickly greyish-white colour and the lines rested more heavily in it than they had before. He looked as though he'd aged years in a matter of minutes.

"Look what you've done," Calvin growled in a raspy voice, staring around in horror at the broken sandglasses that littered the floor. "You've ruined them. All of that time, wasted."

Audrey's eyes widened in comprehension. That was why he still had all of the sandglasses that had stopped; he was still holding onto what little time they'd given him. "Duke," she hissed quietly, her voice nearly drowned out as Calvin continued to rant angrily at them. "We need to break the other sandglasses."

"What?" Duke asked incredulously. Audrey didn't answer, concentrating on sliding herself up the wall slowly so as not to send the pain spasming through her shoulder again. Then, gritting her teeth, she lurched toward the shelves. With her good arm, she grabbed the nearest sandglass and lifted it over her head.

Calvin's eyes bulged out of their sockets. "No, what are you doing?" he half-shrieked. Grimacing tightly, Audrey hurled the sandglass across the room. It exploded against the far wall, spraying them all in splintered wood and shards of glass, and as the fine white sand rained down over them Calvin let out a hysterical scream. Audrey and Duke watched as the lines in his face deepened even further and the last of the colour faded from his skin.

"No, stop!" Calvin choked out. He had sunk back, leaning on one arm with support while the other clutched at his chest. His breathing was coming in shaky, shallow gasps and there was a look of agony on his blanched face. "Stop please."

"You're time is over," Audrey said darkly and, with one sweeping motion, brushed an entire shelf clean. The sound was high-pitched as dozens of sandglasses simultaneously exploded. A second backhanded swipe cleared the shelf below it and when she finally turned to face Calvin again she froze. There was nothing but a withered corpse curled on the carpet.

"Audrey." Duke crossed the room, glass crunching beneath his shoes, and he placed a hand tentatively on her shoulder.

"Nathan," she said, the panic that had sank beneath the adrenaline pooling to the surface again. She glanced down at the floor and could see the stains where red liquid had seeped into the faded carpet. She didn't need years of federal training to know that it was blood. But if Nathan's blood was here, then what was inside of him? "Duke, we've got to get back to the hospital. Now."

"Yeah, okay," Duke said, not bothering to argue. He eyed the rotting corpse in the middle of the room and felt his stomach churn in an entirely unmanly sort of way, and he wanted to get out before he made a complete fool of himself. "Just one thing first." He reached onto the lowest row of shelves again and grabbed the little cherry wood sandglass. With a look of determination, he flipped it back over. The sand whirled inside, and then began trickling back through the funnel.

Duke straightened up and met Audrey's inquiring gaze. "Had to be worth a shot," he said with a small shrug. "C'mon, let's get you to the hospital." When she looked unsteady on her feet, he looped an arm around her waist supportively and they hurried back out to the truck.

. . . . .

The Intensive Care ward had been split in chaos. While Dr. Travis Martin and his team had been working on keeping Nathan Wuornos alive, a second page had come through that the teenage boy down the hall was also crashing. They were short-staffed and half of his team had been forced to leave to tend to the boy. With the one nurse left at Travis' aide, they were struggling to stabilize the detective.

"His heart rate is steadying," the nurse announced suddenly, her surprise evident in her breathless voice. Almost not daring to believe it, Travis looked up at the machine registering his heart beat. It was still weak, but it had become less erratic, taking up something similar to a natural pace. That was the first step.

"He's gonna pull out of this," Travis said, trying to convince himself of it. It was a slim chance; there were still a long list of things that could go wrong, not to mention the handful they'd added during resuscitation. But it was a chance, and he had to cling to that hope.

Two more minutes passed with Travis checking his watch every ten seconds in between monitoring the waves of crimson sand and damp dust that were being filtered out of Wuornos' body. The strength of the heart rate hadn't improved, and Travis was started to get concerned again. He exchanged an anxious glance with the nurse over the bed. This low steadiness would keep him alive for now, but it wasn't the sort of thing that would help him heal. If he didn't improve soon, there was a good chance of becoming brain dead and spending the rest of his numbered days in a vegetative state.

Suddenly Wuornos' body convulsed beneath the doctor's grip. As smoothly as he could, Travis pulled the suction tube from the back of his neck before it could crush against his brain stem and then turned his attention to what was happening. Wuornos' body was seizing and Travis' ears caught onto a wheezing sound that made his eyes widened.

"The breathing tube," he said hastily, gesturing at the nurse who was clutching it. "Get it out. Out!" The nurse looked alarmed but she nodded and eased the tube from Wuornos' throat. The moment it was out of him, Nathan Wuornos began letting out great, hacking coughs. His entire body shook with the effort as he coughed into the bed's sheets, sprinkling them with dark gritty debris. After a long minute of this, he retched, expelling even more of the coarse sand and bile. And then he slumped back into the bed, still coughing but more lightly now and breathing steadily in between fits.

"I don't believe it," Travis breathed in awe. Wuornos was lying on the pillow, his half-open eyes unfocused and gazing up at the ceiling. Above his head, the heart monitor had miraculously returned to a regulated pace. Travis had no idea what had been done or what had changed, but Nathan Wuornos was somehow, inexplicably, alive. "Let's get this all cleaned up. I imagine Agent Parker will be here any moment and I don't want to be the one that gets in between these two."

"Trav," the nurse said, and when he looked across at her, she was staring down at the pool of sick on the floor. "Should we set up a biological containment on this? In case it can spread this epidemic or something?"

Travis shook his head resolutely. "No, I can assure you Mary, this madness is passed now," he said. She was even older than him, old enough to have lived through the hard times of Haven, and she easily understood the truth beneath his cryptic response.

This Trouble was over.


	18. Epilogue

Audrey was watching disinterestedly as the clock above the doorframe ticked tonelessly. Each passing second produced a dull tick noise and a jerky movement of the narrow red arm. And each dull tick and jerky twitch was just another second that Nathan hadn't woken up.

The doctor had assured her that he was alive. Apparently he had woken up briefly before she'd arrived at the hospital but then passed out again only minutes later and he had been deeply asleep ever since. It wasn't that Audrey didn't trust the doctor, although she was rather annoyed with him for waylaying her on her way to see Nathan when she'd first arrived. It was only a small bullet hole in her collarbone, but after a lot of rambling about protocols and biological contamination and health concerns, he'd carted her away to have her taken care of. It had been an extra hour and a half and a rather large pain killer later before she'd finally been allowed into the hospital room where Nathan was still sleeping.

Audrey trusted the doctor. She just wanted to see it for herself.

It was hard to believe that Nathan had been through so much in the last couple days, looking at him now. There were the thin gauze bandages around his neck, and the gash in his forehead had been stitched closed, but beyond that he merely looked a bit tired, which wasn't altogether an unusual thing for him. Watching him sleeping peacefully, Audrey couldn't believe how close she'd come to losing him completely.

Duke's words rang in her head. "You two, you've got something different between you, don't you?" She hadn't really had time to think about what that meant before, but now that she did it was filling her mind. Was there something between her and Nathan? Sure they were close, they were best friends, but was there more to it? Were they more? Audrey's head was swimming with all of the implications. All she could be sure of was that whether it was as her best friend or something more, she couldn't imagine going back to a life without Nathan Wuornos.

He shifted in his sleep and Audrey smiled, reaching forward to brush aside some of the hair that had fallen across his forehead. Wanting to maintain the reassuring contact just a bit longer, she traced her fingertips lightly over the worry lines permanently engraved into the skin. Nathan grimaced.

"Parker," he grumbled in a hoarse, weak voice. "Don't touch." Audrey recoiled hastily, fighting back an abrupt wave of hurt. He didn't want her touching him. Maybe she had read too much into things. Maybe his feelings were entirely platonic. "I forgot how much stitches hurt, I'd rather keep it that way."

Audrey's minor panic attack froze and comprehension filled its place; her fingers had strayed close to the stitches when she had been toying with his hair. "Sorry," she murmured. The corners of Nathan's lips quirked up. "How are you feeling?"

"Alive, thanks to you," he said and lazily tilted his head in her direction. His eyes were only half open and unfocused, but the light and life had come back to them. "You're getting good at saving me, Parker."

"It's because you're such a great damsel in distress," Audrey replied with a smile. It felt good to be able to return to their wry banter again. "Welcome back."

"Thanks," he said with a small smirk. "I gotta say, it's nice to hear your voice again. I never realized how much you talk until I couldn't hear it."

"So you're all back then?" Audrey asked hopefully.

"It's coming back," he said. "I can hear pretty well, and smell too. I can't see much yet, it's all just dark fuzzy colours. But I don't feel as heavy, like I did before when my body wouldn't move. I think I'm gonna pull out of this one."

"You'd better because I don't think I could handle having Duke as a partner full-time," she chuckled.

"Duke?" Nathan asked, half raising an eyebrow in what she assumed was supposed to come across as a questioning look. "You teamed up with Duke?"

"Someone had to help me out," Audrey said with a shrug. "I couldn't babysit you and solve the case at the same time, you're too high maintenance. He was actually very helpful. And concerned about saving you."

Nathan let out a short laugh. "Now I know you're lying," he said but she could tell it was without much conviction.

"No really," she said. "He went into the final showdown and tackled the bad guy straight to the ground. He'd be rubbing it in your face now but I think he disappeared with the nurse that was stitching up the cuts he got in the mess."

Nathan lazily blinked a few times and then grinned. "Okay, I think you've got a story to tell. So catch me up, what exactly happened today?"

Audrey relaxed back into her chair, shifting her injured arm into a more comfortable position, and then started in on the tale. He listened intently, snorted when she told about her violent encounter with Jimmy Daley, and marvelled at the way she'd finally come to the conclusion about the killer.

"So it was Calvin Demarcio all along?" Nathan asked in awe and then shook his head with a grimace. "Figures. We should always just start with the least likely suspect in these cases, it seems to always work out that way."

"Most likely," Audrey agreed with a small laugh. "But then in Haven, everyone is the most and least likely. This place defies all laws for normalcy." Nathan nodded and then prompted her to continue the story. She relayed the rest of the afternoon to him, from the drive to Mariner Avenue to the shelf of sandglasses to their confrontation with Calvin and his mother. A smile tugged at her lips as she watched Nathan tense with anticipation, sitting up straighter and narrowing his unfocused eyes in concentration. When she told how Calvin had gotten ahold of her sidearm, Nathan let out a startled noise.

"He shot you?"

"Just in the shoulder," Audrey said dismissively. "It's fine."

"You were shot? How badly?" Nathan pressed.

"I'm fine," Audrey repeated, trying not to laugh at his anxiousness. He'd just been drained of nearly all his life and then had it tossed back into his body, but he was concerned about a little gunshot in the shoulder. "It's already been treated, doctor said I'll be fine."

Nathan still didn't look fully reassured but he nodded and settled himself back into the mattress again. "You probably should've started with that and gotten it out of the way," he grumbled half-heartedly.

Leaning closer, Audrey said, "Speaking of things that should have been talked about..." Reaching forward with her good hand, she closed her hand around his. The lines around Nathan's jaw tightened slightly; he knew what she meant. "You can feel me." His expression remained fixed and he didn't say anything. "Nathan, how long?"

"A while," he answered evasively. Audrey made an annoyed noise and he continued, "Since the day Jess left. You kissed my cheek and it was warm and soft and - I just couldn't believe it."

Audrey sat in silence, chewing over that new piece of information. That had been weeks ago. She hadn't been able to pinpoint it before, but now she realized that all of the changes in Nathan's behaviour were timed with that moment. She had always assumed that he had changed because of Jess, but she was wrong. It was because of her. "So you can feel me when I touch you?"

"Just when I touch your skin," Nathan said quietly. "I can't feel it when I grab your arm through your sleeve, or when you touch me with your gloves on. But when your skin touches mine, I can feel the pressure, and whether it's warm or cold or soft or rough." He looked for a moment like he wanted to say more, but then simply closed his mouth and swallowed.

Her mind was already reeling, but there was one more thing that Audrey still needed an answer to. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Nathan closed his eyes and swallowed hard again, and his hand tightened just slightly around hers. "I didn't know how," he admitted. "It's such an unreal thing, I hardly know how to think about it myself, let alone explain it to someone else. I mean, I can't feel anything but then I touch you and suddenly there's something that I can feel again, and I don't know how or why but it's true. It makes me scared to touch you, because I just don't know how to deal with those new feelings, but then I don't want to ever stop because it feels so good to feel human contact again. But I couldn't tell you, because I didn't want to scare you away." He lets out a heavy breath, and Audrey can tell that he's had all of this building in his chest for weeks and had no outlet for it to escape.

"Scare me away?" she asked curiously. "How would it scare me away?"

"I didn't – I don't want you to feel obligated or anything," he said, looking distinctly uncomfortable now. "I thought it might scare you that I can feel you, that maybe it'd make you anxious about being around me or something. And I don't want you to feel like you owe me anything because I can feel you. Like maybe you'd feel like you needed to touch me more or something. I don't want that, and I didn't want you to think that. You're my best friend, Audrey, and I just didn't want to risk anything that would change that."

Something felt like it was expanding in her chest, warm and comfortable, like her own heart was growing to fill every millimetre of her ribcage. What had she done to deserve such a wonderful partner and friend at her side? One who would put her own peace of mind above something that was so monumental to him? Smiling, Audrey threaded their fingers together and squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I'm not going anywhere, Nathan," she said and she saw the set of his shoulders ease slightly. "But I really wish you had told me sooner."

"I know," Nathan said quietly. "And I really never meant for you to find out that way either. I wanted to be able to just tell you, but I could never find the right time or the right words. I'm not good with words. Or timing, really."

Audrey smiled and bit back a small laugh. "Well I can't argue with that fact," she agreed and Nathan's lips twitched again. "Just – no more secrets?"

"No more secrets," Nathan said solemnly. And then, his expression still entirely stoic, he lifted his other hand and used his pointer finger to draw an X across his heart. Audrey laughed and nudged his arm playfully, and Nathan let a small smile slip out.

"It's good to have you back, Wuornos," Audrey said sincerely, squeezing his hand.

"It's good to be back, Parker," Nathan replied and returned the gesture. Taking a deep breath, Audrey stood up and leaned down to press a lingering kiss against her partner's cheek. She didn't miss the grin that curled his lips at the contact or the colour that flooded into his skin, but she decided that was a conversation for another time. She still didn't fully understand what Duke had said about her and Nathan's relationship, or where either of them stood on it. She couldn't make sense of the twisting emotions in her stomach, the decidedly unclean images that sometimes filled her mind, or the pleasant tingling warmth creeping up her arm from the place where Nathan was brushing the back of his thumb across her wrist. There really was only one thing she was sure of.

"Hey Parker," Nathan chimed in suddenly, an almost inquisitive look on his face and a glint in his eye that made Audrey fear that they were in for trouble. "What do you think the odds are that you can sneak me in some pancakes from the diner? I can smell again so I think I could taste too, and I haven't tasted a good pancake in days."

Audrey simply laughed and rolled her eyes. Because the one thing she was sure of was that, no matter what that whirling mass of unexplored emotions lead them to, as long as she still had Nathan Wuornos at her side then they would be all right.


End file.
